Yes, everyone read it. As someone posted the math above for, this will actually also nerf our mitigation, as currently Inspiration/Ancestral healing normally gives us ~ 14% damage reduction when it's up. This will only give 10%.

I have been going over that math all day trying to see where that comes from, and I honestly can't come to the same conclusion. If you look at my unbuffed armor right now I sit at about 27k. With inspiration I jump to about 40k. This is still below the cap and is only good for an increase of about 8.6% physical mitigation after DR. I think the poster before didn't figure DR into his math, just haven't been able to pin point it. After I do, I will be posting math showing the values after dr with a comparison to the new 10% pure physical.

Remember that going from 63% mitigation from armor to 68% mitigation from armor isn't a 5% reduction in damage taken. If something swings for 100 damage, with those two armor values you'll take 37 and 32 damage respectively, right? Dropping from 37 to 32 damage is a reduction of 5/37 or 13.5%. If instead you keep the 63% mitigation and reduce the damage by 10%, you go from 100 to 37 to 33.3 damage taken, more than the 32 damage you would have taken before. This is using the numbers provided above, so I don't know exactly what armor values correlate to 63% and 68% but I'm assuming whoever listed them first was right.

Could you wonderful DK masters please treat DK tanking the same as DK DPS? Split this thread into 3 threads seperataly addressing tanking in each spec. There are threads for each Spec for DPS there should be threads for each spec for Tanking. I appreciate most everything people post, but I am tired of reading 6 pages on Blood/Frost tanking when all I want is the latest news on unholy tanking. Thank you so much.

If their aim was to hurt DK tanking, they would have played with our cooldowns and not our base numbers for hp and mitigation. These are long-term scaling changes designed to fix an imminent problem.

I would urge caution when shouting from the rooftops about us being the worst tanks in 3.2. First of all, these changes (and a lot of similar changes in the patch notes such as the profession tweaks) are aimed at affecting our power in the long run. 3.2 isn't due out for a while. When it does come, it will bring another level of gear (if not a full tier upgrade) that will boost our current values for armor, hp, mitigation etc. Seeing as we currently scale way better than other tanks that are receiving the buffs, these tweaks to our armor and HP will be covered up by how well we still scale compared to warriors and paladins (you could easily argue against this statement but I'd have to look at some numbers for how blocking will be affected first). You'll notice druid tanking is unchanged.

Scaling changes is also why they changed our Toughness. If you're hitting armor cap under certain situations already, how out of control do you think things will be when you're in T9?

These changes should bring us down to druid levels and warriors and paladins up to par. While I dislike my class getting hurt, I believe we are currently too powerful and can stand to take a hit.

As our Off-tank, I currently have worse gear but roughly 3k more armor, 1k more hp, and the same avoidance as our Paladin MT who is in a bunch of BiS. I have better cooldowns. It was a joke. Hopefully these changes will put us all more in line. By then I'll have more Hardmode gear and won't be worried about an HP and armor tweak and neither should you.

If you think the changes will really break us, I hope you hop on the PTR and give Blizzard better numbers.

This is a thread about how best to tank hardmode endgame content. It's not the cliffnotes on how to DK tank. This requires spec changes and often one spec dominates certain situations. Unholy is currently #3 behind both Blood and Frost in this respect. Having three different threads would not satisfy the purpose for which this thread was created: "how to best tank as a DK in the toughest situation." I understand why you posted, but there's another tanking thread that could more appropriately be split up. If you want an Unholy tanking thread (not much to talk about in it, TBH) then you'll probably have to make it yourself.

Who is still hitting the armor cap? I'm not BiS yet for everything, but even with Inspiration/Ancestral Healing I no longer come close to hitting the armor cap since the Frost Presence armor reduction.

I agree that nerfs for us were/are warranted. As is, DK/Druid are the only logical choices for hardmode tanks. We make so many encounters and mechanics dramatically easier to go through because of cooldown usage. However, I don't think that this will put us on par with Paladins and Warriors. Druids and Paladins (assuming the AD change goes live as is) will be far away the best tanks, with Warriors behind them and DK's behind Warriors. That's from running the numbers off of what we have so far. However, I agree with you that it will be important for us to get on the PTR and test these things, as it seems Blizzard takes feedback from there more seriously than that which comes from straight number crunching outside of it.

Cutting previous post down to key points to avoid unintended issue:

In response to Daedalix, the issue I believe people have is the fact that we will no longer have anything to make up for lack of shield block. While I understand that it may not be quite as bad as people are thinking, it is simply natural for the community as a whole to call into question where to go next when tools have been taken away completely and cooldowns tweaked.

That said, we definitely had a nerf coming. I believe that anyone worth their salt knows that it was coming and so I definitely agree with you there. I believe that the problem that people have is the perceived magnitude of the changes, and I'm not sure you're going to be able to convince them that its the other way around until, as you put it, the numbers come out.

In response to armor cap issues, I don't think we would have a problem hitting armor cap with the new changes to healers giving us all a passive 10 percent reduction in damage. Perhaps someone already mentioned this but I do not think you considered that. (Note, the plus side to this is much more magic damage reduction, which I think people have missed, but less physical reduction) I do agree though; we won't know until the PTR comes out, and ultimately when the patch comes out. I'm sure everyone is hoping for you to be right.

Incorrect. The patch note for Inspiration/Ancestral Healing say "The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10%". Emphasis on physical. Thus, nothing is changed in regards to magic damage.

Oops, my mistake. Thank you for the clarification. It looks like the ability is then strictly nerfed unlike what I was thinking.

DKs are currently too strong, after these changes though you will be the weakest tanks, by a good margin.

No one is hitting, or even coming close the armor cap right now, no one. Also, current warriors with the Alagon shield will actually have even armor values with you post 3.2 if the patch goes live as is. With the Thorim ten man shield, they will have about 200-300 less.

We can speak on scaling, but don't forget, shield armor is based on Ilvl, a "hard" mode shield, will out-scale a full suit for "normal mode armor+FP" in its current state (Because its a 6 Ilvl jump). Since the shield contains a bigger armor boost than the 2-3 pieces of hard mode stuff a DK could get, this will place shield tanks slightly ahead or even. When you factor in block (As crappy as it is), shield tanks will simply be superior. DKs having 1200-1500 more armor was balanced. Them having 4k more armor, was not. The original nerf to FP was justified, the further nerf to armor, was not in the mathematical sense.

DKs needed a health tune down, and they needed the IBF adjustment. This change to armor was silly though, according to the numbers.


As someone pointed out, this is not how damage reduction works. To get how much damage was actually reduced, you take post DR damage and divide the values by each other.

Also, "10%" pure physical happens multiplicative...Its not actually 10%, the math in my previous post is 100% correct.

Well, blood health needed a tune down. Hitting up Vot3W makes sense. Hitting up frost presence and leaving Will of the Necropolis intact is a strange choice. Will of the Necropolis is a big contributor to blood's EHP advantage on every fight with nontrivial tank healing. If you're getting spiked in Wrath it's by big single hits, and if you're not getting spiked then your health/mitigation doesn't matter. Most of the time when we're talking about DKs being chosen over other tanks for hardmodes, those DKs are blood. The first place to look for tanking nerfs should be blood's advantage over frost/unholy.

The IBF nerf seems aimed at Hodir, Mim, and Vezax if it's aimed at PvE at all. The cases where IBF is too good are boss gimmicks: "boss casts X at a predictable interval, when that happens blow a big cooldown or die." Blizzard barely used that for four years, then they introduce DKs and slap cooldown-or-die gimmicks onto half the bosses that matter.

To pick the strongest example, the DK advantage on Vezax is so perfectly constructed that Blizzard had to realize what they were doing. Vezax's "kite phase" lines up with IBF down to the second, without fail, and increases his damage by just enough that IBF trivializes it. If we're supposed to be forced to kite Vezax the damage increase could have been 500% rather than 100%, he could have gained a 100% mortal strike, whatever. The encounter designers deliberately chose a buff that was survivable with a big cooldown. If they're going to build encounters around IBF of course it's going to be too good.

There seem to be some indications from Blizzard that there have been changes to the DK changes even since the patch notes were posted, so even what makes it on to the PTR might be different from what we're looking at now. If I was going to pick a change they might decide to reverse their position on, it might be the Frost Presence health boost nerf. I think a two minute IBF is an almost certainty, but I hope they improve Unbreakable Armor to compensate or Frost tanks are going to be hosed on cooldown reliant fights.

For the longest time i have been attracted to avoidance tanking. Though i know druids are the ones who ought to be stacking dodge, i was wondering if with the DW viability, in terms of threat, and the increase in BS dmg if frost avoidance tanking would be possible.


i currently tank ulduar (2 or 3 pieces shy of BIS gear before 25 man hard modes) with 60 % avoidance (and 36k hp unbuffed) which jumps to around 61.5 with the sigil of deflection proc (which is up all the time).

with 2 main hand weapons with + defense on them i would run close to 534 defense; re-gemming would would give me defense cap of 540 with a loss of at most 1k hp. i do gain about 2.1 % parry + dodge given that i have two main hand weapons like the last laugh

3.2 comes along and i loose another 1.3k hp this puts me at 33.7k hp unbuffed. However, enchanting for 2% parry on each (looing 2 % health) and retaining the same amount of stam (which is roughly true) i would in net stand at 33k hp unbuffed and in frost presence however i would have gained 2.1 + 4 % = 6.1 % avoidance. If i spec into frost with Frigid dreadplate this would total to a 9.1% avoidance increase in terms of incoming physical damage.

all in all i would be walking into combat with 70-71% avoidance and 33k hp: it seems as if i am trading 3-3.5k hp for 9.1 % avoidance and possibly some threat.

I am currently speced blood and the 6% stam from vetran of the third war being nerfed to 3% and being traded off for improved frost presence would correspond to only a 650 hp loss at the most since 2% of net dmg reduction corresponds to more than 3% stam

my guilds main tank, warrior, walks in with 33k hp and markedly better gear than mine: it seems as if a 71% avoidance would makeup for a lack of a shield ... are my numbers wrong?

Your numbers aren't really wrong, but what you are forgetting is a flip to that type of build requires more hit to stay threat capped. Duel Wield requires 27% hit to be effective, and unless you happen to have most of that lying about (which I doubt if you have to regem for defense) your threat will suffer.

I guess thats okay if you're the OT and you have a while to beat on the mob before the dps comes and kills it.

Another thing to remember is the nerf to Frost Strike means frost tanks can't just dismiss expertise anymore.

Just some things to consider in your analysis.

Frost Tanks can't dismiss expertise even now, although Rune Strike and Frost Strike are your top two TPS abilities and cannot be parried Obliterate not only remains a signficant portion of your TPS it is the largest generator of Runic Power. It's a disengenous rumor to simply say that Frost can neglect expertise, even relative to the other trees. You should still aim for the softcap, like everyone else.

Why would DW require 27% hit to be effective when tanking? No DW classes currently stack hit to that point to be effective; there's absolutely no reason a tank would need to either.

You're missing the point; when DWing, the specials cap is still 8%. Nobody shoots for the white hit cap, because it is a uselessly small increase in DPS (or, in this case, TPS) relative to any other possible stat. White damage is especially useless when rune strike is considered, because, like heroic strike, it converts a white swing to a yellow hit, meaning it still has an 8% base miss chance.

UA being inferior to VB or Bone Shield (at least on current encounters) is exactly why boss design favors DK cooldowns right now. UA is shield block. If shield block as a cooldown were competitive with straight percentage mitigation, DK cooldowns and warrior cooldowns would be pretty comparable. Most of the time we'd have the stronger one-minute, but their one-minute would be good enough and they'd have the stronger long cooldown and the stronger anti-magic ability. (At least, given that spell reflect worked on everything AMS works on, which is another design problem.)

Unfortunately cooldown-or-die fights are about big single hits, so shield block or anything like it isn't a viable cooldown. The problem is boss design. Out of the ten hardmode bosses in Wrath, four of them use the big-single-hit cooldown-or-die model. Blizzard stated that they wanted fights to vary enough that the same tanks wouldn't be optimal for every encounter, but they keep repeating this same gimmick. If the designers get out of this rut in Coliseum or Icecrown, is the IBF nerf still necessary?

While true on the special hit cap at 8% it still has currently has to overcome the lesser RS damage, just something I think blizzard needs to fix for DW to put out the same level of threat.

I still don't get how you derive that final number 8.9%.

A 10% physical damage reduce is a 10% physical damage reduce in my book no matter the twists.

Because WoW's system works in multiplicative auras. So the final reduction depends on how much reduction comes before and how many different reductions you have.

Take a warrior.

Warrior is Armor DR*Defensive stance*Inspiration.

Any of them alone=their reduction, combined, they all reduce slightly less individually but more overall.

Think of it like this...If your armor gives you 65% melee damage reduction (Lets say)...In your scenario, you get an additional 10 from defensive stance and 10 from inspiration, so that should equal 85, right?

It doesn't.

It actually equals .35*.9*.9= or 71.65%.

How much less damage less is that? (Remember, damage taken is not damage reduction.)

Well, if the tank got hit for 100 without defensive stance or inspiration or armor...Lets see what he gets hit by when adding them in one by one.

With just armor, he gets hit for.......35 Damage.

With armor+defensive stance, he gets hit for......31.5 damage, or 10% less.

With armor+defensive stance+inspiration, he gets hit for...... 28.35 damage, or 19% less.

See the 1% loss there? As you stack more aura's, the value of each degrades slightly. (Which is one reason why the druids 12% is very strong, its one aura.)

Inspiration increasing the reduction of armor, without adding another aura, was superior because of this. All tanks should take a little more damage when 3.2 rolls around.

On the topic of Necrosis vs. Sudden Doom, I've found that Necrosis provides much more threat in my current gear.

I think a few things are contributing to this:

*Deathcoil has a higher miss rate than melee and rune strikes. I'll have to check logs again, but can necrosis miss? I'm sure it's resistible.
*T8 set bonus gives +10% to Runestrikes which in turn leads to larger Necrosis strikes.
*Most of the blood talents buff physical damage, so I think you'll see better scaling there (new weapon = bigger necrosis contribution)

After tanking General Hardmode (10 man) my dps has informed me that threat was no issue where as I was having some problems before. (I'm still using Skull-clad Cleaver, I have terrible luck with weapon drops).

Any other anecdotal evidence one way or the other?