I don't really have many mods, but I can comment on the nature of tanking at least in 5-mans so far. It is a very chaotic looking thing, though in reality it ends up more like paladins than anything else. Most pulls consist of opening with strangulate/Death Grip on casters followed by a DnD and a bloodboil to generate instant agro (DnD hits for about 1200 over 10 seconds atm though it is being buffed and bloodboil about 300ish, this is in tank gear so lowish ap). After this I'll plague strike and icy touch the primary target. When DnD fades, bloodboil comes up (11 sec with talent) I'll pestilence twice and bloodboil again. This is more than enough agro for keeping it off healers generally, and I've held agro against a guildy rogue in full sunwell gear.

Can you 'aoe' tank (as in have mages/locks aoe packs down)? No. That is still the paladins niche. However, the DK has enough tools (caveat below) to pull an entire pack and keep it off healers, which is IMO the perfect balance. Single target threat is fine, and for the record death gripping bosses that patrol out of an entire room of trash is downright amazing.

What is the biggest problem with DK tanking right now? Pestilence. This ability has zero AI associated with it. If you pestilence while DnD is active, it may try and spread the DnD disease. Same with ghoul diseases. The mechanics need to be changed so that it A) AoEs at least one type of disease (either base or with a lower tier talent) and B) spreads only blood plague or the new frostfever.

So the short answer is DKs are easily the most fun tanking I've ever had and the underpinnings are there for a great system, it just needs to be fully implemented as yet. I'm waiting till the next big patch goes live to see if any of my concerns are fixed before I post something with regards to these mechanics on the beta forums, though. Right now DK tanking already in a good enough state that I think Blizzard knows that things need to be changed slightly, so I'm assuming a lot of the current issues (and some are just bugs) will be changed on their own.

Well, I hope dual wielding is not sub par for tanking to 2 handers. The Death Knights seems built around parry and the cool factor of dual wielding like some action flick is very appealing. Plus I just can't stand the slow pace of wielding a 2 hander, nothing more painful to watch than a mob having next to no health and having a miss on a 2 hander imo. As I see it DPS will surely go to 2 handers with the normalization of most of the abilities and that Frost talent needs some purpose.

Pestilence copies all diseases to targets being hit, so D&D doesn't really matter. The issue I've had with it is the weird range. It's like a cleave pretty much, only frontal and only in melee range, makes it tough to land on moving targets.

With the boost D&D will be getting, DKs might be able to do AE pulls against AEing locks/mages every 30secs. With enough firepower, you can already somewhat do it, by blood boiling a bit after they start AEing, and rotating targets to hit them with white hits/deathcoils.

As for TPS, I can somewhat extrapolate from the damage meters. I usually get 1k-1.2k DPS while tanking, with pretty much 100%uptime since I'm the first to attack and stuff. You add 45%threat in frost presence and well, it's 1450-1750TPS. That's an average though, and takes into account AEing. But that seems about right, to be honest I can count the times I lost aggro on a single mob on one hand, even when "distributing" deathcoils to other mobs around me for side aggro. You have to be really distracted by mobs running around to actually lose aggro on the main mob. And with 2 "taunts", it's not much of an issue either.

Two-hander or not, you'll be popping an instant ability every 1-2 seconds, so it won't be as slow as a 2H warrior or paladin. Just remember what was said before, if you really want to think about a DW tank... just because of the mechanics of dual wielding, you're going to have to gimp either your mitigation or your threat generation when compared to a 2H tank. Unless 1H tanking weapons are so good that they make up for it, 2H will probably win out. But, even then, the superior socketability of 2H weapons may still prove superior. Assuming Blizzard follows through with gear homogenization, and thus removes "tanking weapons" from the game (as they are used solely by Prot. Warriors, although it is possible that Prot. Paladins may start to use them as well), 2H will nearly always win out...

Doen't using a slow 2 hander weapon give us more benefit from the increased swing speed after a parry?

Yep. The game mechanics are pretty clear (unless absolutely drastic changes are made to a lot more than just the DKs)... a 2h tank will be optimal. Maybe that means that Frostmourne will be a tanking weapon =D

Apologies if this has been touched on, but regarding PvE raid viability, with the recent blue post saying raid debuffs won't be stacking anymore, can anyone really give a convincing argument as to why you'd bring more than one DK specced as blood to buff your melee to a raid?

Admittedly,I say this through the lens of sunwell min/max. For guilds only doing 10mans and such I doubt it'll matter, but for guilds that've cleared sunwell and are in that constant min/max mindset for 25man raids, it seems like this would be a fairly large concern.

I'm looking at CoE vs Ebon Plague. Untalented CoE is currently the best magic dmg increase at 10%, and can be talented up to 13%. This flat out trumps anyone else, which basically seems to imply, if raid debuffs won't be stacking, that it's then pointless for anyone else in your raid to take similiar talents (weaving, scorch, earth and moon, ebon plague, etc). This alone seems to render deep unholy seemingly useless, as Ebon Plague seems like it's supposed to be the big attraction of deep unholy.

I realize frost is probably getting revamped, but am I wrong in saying most of the syngergies within the tree from freeze procs and such will probably be useless in a pve raid situation? Yes, a slew of their abilities will work on trash, but honestly, no one cares. I'm looking at this thinking of an early Bruttalus situation (were hitting the enrage timer was a real concern in the beginning), or Patchwerk 2.0.

As it stands Blood seems to be the only one that brings anything to a raid, from abom strength+hysteria. You're basically a 2hander enhance shaman in that regard, with arguably less group utility.

In dungeons I haven't had an issue tanking halls of stone robots. You just pop obliterate on them without any disease, and deathcoils, it's enough to keep them on you. It's not optimal, but gets the job done. Lacks a decent unholy rune dump, but with Plaguestrike going 1U instead of 1U1B should fix that. Not much more different than mobs immune to bleeds as a feral(might be a bit worse actually).

In raids however, I doubt we'll be able to tank any robot boss unless they make them vulnerable to diseases. Not impossible since there are some robot based mobs that you can use disease on currently, and that'd be like making a boss holy immune, which they've never done.

Source please!
The only thing I read about this were palas/hunter/priestes getting the option to be mana-batteries and warlock/unholy-DK being both able to debuff for more magic damage. But it sounded more like an idea than a concrete plan.


As they made severall imune mobs attackable with lacterate as ferals whined about tanking... I can't imagine them doing the same failure again with DKs. Bosses should never be imune to diseases.

I think this is the post:
WoW Forums -> Tanking talent changes

Another interesting part of that post is that a further talented Icy Talons will be a raid wide buff.

Edited: Ignore above, hypothetical example.

I have been concerned about this for some time now, and haven´t really seen any answers from blues that address my concern. My main so far is a enhancement shaman currently banging his head against m´uru.
And from that high level of play, i cant really think of a good reason to take a "Dps specc" DK (if such a thing really exists), unless he outputs dps rivaling that of rogues/hunters/warlocks. Sure, you could argue that a DK is the ultimate "tank when needed, dps otherwise" class, but a feral druid even gives a raid wide buff (motw), as well as lotp, which can well be compared to abomination´s strenght. All of blizzard´s responses so far have to do with tanking: yeah you can tank, dont worry, etc.
And dont even compare the group (raid now) benefits a enhance shaman brings to the table, its in a whole different galaxy to a pathetic 10% increase to strenght, plus some group healing.

Some time ago I made a post (WoW-Europe.com Forums -> [Suggestion] Blood Tree, and raid spots.) suggesting blood could certainly use a physical damage enhancing disease, or something of the sort. Maybe something with armor penetration, or to that effect, and that would certainly help a raid leader, that has to squeeze everything as much sinergy as possible, be convinced to bring DK(s) on board.

And obviously, if debuffs do not stack, why even take any DK at all? Previously unholy specc was looking safe, but now, i just dont know...

That was a hypothetical example, not a statement of upcoming change.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like the standard DK "keep them off healers" rotations, even just the first few casts/seconds of it, are pretty bad for the rest of the group trying to CC.

Let me put it like this:

For warrior: You can CC right off the bat, or if they're Tclap/shout/tabtarget happy, Bolt it once to piss it off, then CC it away from the pack.

For Druid: Same as warrior.
For Pali: Bolt off the bat to pull out of Consecration then CC.

For DK? Dots, even short term ones, crimp the bejebus out of that.

I think they're just doing things one by one. But yeah if they make ebon plague not stack with CoE and stuff, that gives only one blood DK spec that's remotely useful. It'd need very high dps, but with only 25%threat reduction from the stance stuff, you'd probably end up being threat capped. So every guild would probably just end up having one DK that switches from tanking(for DK oriented tanking stuff, or trash) to blood support DPS spec(abom's str+hysteria+mark of blood).

There's still a lot of work to do on DKs anyway, and seem they're focusing on tanking first. They can't work on everything at once, while still changing base strikes mechanics and so on.


Don't know why you'd wait until mobs are in melee range AND dotted to start CCing. Unless the DK drops D&D, but that's his problem. Just CC as mobs are running to the group. Can also keep mobs on you with deathcoils instead of dots. Totally a non issue imo.

Ebon Plaguebringer?

As for that post by GC, I hope they don't take that too far. Non-stacking and redundancy for boss dps debuffs is a great idea. It gives the designers a lot of control over the encounter because they can assume the boss will almost always have an AP and attack speed debuff.

However, non-stacking and redundancy in raid dps buffs is a terrible idea. It destroys class uniqueness. The developers don't have to assume raid has X amount of haste, or Y amount of frost damage increase. Just Z amount of dps. And how you get there through different sorts of class combinations is one of the fun parts of the game.

Also, madpeon, don't interpret his as a developer change set in stone. It was merely a "what if?"

I definitely agree with Deathwing regarding boss mechanics vs raid mechanics. Also, looking at the blue post regarding debuffs stacking, I don't think he's talking about existing raid debuffs not stacking.

Haste debuffs such as TC and the Thunderfury effect have never stacked in the past, so it seems unlikely that a new DK talent would break the norm. However effects that cause vulnerability to magic damage [ CoE, Weaving, etc] have stacked. ( Although I never had experience with it I believe that [Nightfall] also stacked with currently existing debuffs.)

Perhaps even if this does go through we might get off since the effect of increasing all magic by 9% is not the same as the other effects which are specific schools of magic. This leads one to believe that it could also stack with these effects (not just vulnerabilities that are not applied) as it is not the same effect, despite providing similar benefits.

Nightfall still stacks with other debuffs, but the proc chance is very low.


Basically someone will have to test what stacks with what ability.

That could be it too. It might have been weird range/desync issues, I only use plague strike for a disease right now (IT being changed in patch). I had just assumed it was trying to copy DnD, but this makes more sense.

Well I've tested it with 3diseases(degen plague and bloodcaked blade) and it transferred all 3 on every mob in range. The issue really is the weird range and targetting mechanics, I've had it fail even though I'm pretty sure a cleave would have had hit. A ghoul with master of ghouls is much more efficient at stacking diseases on stuff.

Wasn't this the reason (as well as bleed/poision DPS) they made elemental and mechanicals able to bleed a few patchs back? Unless they're reverting that change they should make diseases work on them too.

About debuff stacking, GC didn't say they were going to make NOTHING stack, she said they were going to take a look at it and decide what will and what will not stack now many buffs are raidwide many new debuffs have been added.

One of the things to consider on Untalented CoE versus Ebon Plaguebringer is the extra dps provided by having the Warlock switch to Curse of Doom. Malediction on the other hand is a different concern. That said, if CoE and Ebon Plaguebringer do not stack, one would have to assume that Misery would not stack with CoE as well. This severely damages the amount of dps a shadow priest brings to the raid as well. Although there is still the mana regneration utility (made exponentially better due to the new potion debuff), it is certainly a concern worth addressing. Furthermore, if Misery stacks but Ebon does not (or vice-versa) this will generate numerous complaints.


One of my recent concerns is the timer on diseases. If the disease duration is 12 seconds it would make annihilation a rather unnecessary talent unless you are speccing into epidemic as well. Even then, you are burning 5 points (not counting prerequisites) in order to give yourself one more obliterate instead of a Plauge/Scourge Strike and Icy Touch every 20 seconds. Is that trade going to be worthwhile?

Final issue to address: Will Icy touch debuff apply on bosses. Furthermore, if the debuff does not apply, does Icy Talons still trigger or not?