Velthore

Again im not saying that a DK cant tank everything in game and that we are not comarable to the other tanks as things stand right now. What i am saying is we are not the first choice for most encounters due to varied mechanics add in icecrown radiance and it get s worse. Again I just dont see the effects of chill of the throne being equal across the board. I know its a buff to warriors, makes me wish I never switched from my warrior to my dk. I feel pallies will still be up top. Druids, im not 100% sure on, i understand the arguement that druids only have dodge as an avoidance stat but there are some very insightfull posts stating that because druids have the highest ammount of dodge they will be effected the most but might possible still prove to be the best effective health tank (behind warriors) in IC due to the ammount of dodge they will still retain. Take that with a grain of salt as I have never played a druid, just some theorycrafting I have read. The more even damage intake which blizz is shooting for will help DK's as well as everybody else but the threat problems it could cause on top of the apparent discrepancy between how this affects one tank class to another just doesnt sit well with me.

 

piken

You have once again missed the point of what blizzard has done tank wise to the game. With all of the LK changes and patches, all 4 tanks when equally geared take similar damage, generate similar threat, and have similar EH. The basis that most people look at for the argument that DK's are subpar are based on looking at some of the best guilds in the world who have had their same tanks established for a very long time and 99% of the time since the dk op removal will go to the player that they know the best to tank.

The guild I am in has a very open mind on tanking, it took a while to get them there because of the cries from healers that healed bad dk's during the rotate cd's or die era. Once this hurdle was over come, the healers have come to the point of not caring who they are healing as long as it is one of our geared tanks, yes we count our guild as having 4 mt's.

When you compare the differences between the tanks as they stand now,

Druids have the most dodge and highest health pool.
DK's depending on spec have the same or more hp then warriors and pallies, while maintaining a little bit more avoidance, and a lot more DR due to higher armor and the DR from frost pres and BB.

The area where DK's were hurt after the nerfs was with similar stats to other tanks and a nerf to have the same armor, pallies and warriors with their sheilds made them the optimal tank and DK got the pine horse.

With the ToTC patch, this was fixed and as I have seen only stubborn people have ignored the changes.

DK's lost avoidance to gain DR that is global (not just physical like that of the shield from a pally or a warrior) and for more armor as the nerf to +ac was removed.

When compared to the other 3 tanks in guild, I am on average at 9-10% more damage reduction then they are which made up for the shield and overpowered block rating changes. With that, in guild we have come to see that any of the 4 tanks can be rotated with out adverse affect on the raid (We are working on the 2 ot method of anub h 25 instead of the single unhittable warrior as we dont feel that this is that much of a help).

 

Velthore

My guild is as open minded or more than most. Hell I tanked one set off adds for our first heroic Anub kill which is by far one of the 2 worst options, props to my guilds healers for keeping me up through that nightmare. I still believe DK's are one of the worst choices for the majority of progression content. The fact that you can say that you go back to farm content, heroic or not, and say that all 4 tanks are on the same page does not necessarily make me feel any better.

 

• GravityDK

The latest version now has a priority allowing you to keep 20 RP for RS always; which means we can simulate Scent of Blood accurately. It has had boss attack speed/avoidance for a while, and SoB procs based on those factors.

I tested the Unholy spec I wrote about earlier, then moved 1 pt from Necrosis to SoB, using Bluedragon's i245 gear level again. I used 25-man raid buffs this time (added some +magic damage buffs).

Remarkably, using 1/3 SoB showed:
* a slight loss (~1.2%) of TPS at 30% avoidance (Icecrown aura) and the same loss at 50%.

Also checked, Icecrown aura is a 7% TPS (400 TPS) loss for Unholy (5625 TPS at 50% avoidance, 5215 with 30% avoidance).

 

Goldengiff

Tanking the adds on Anub is one of the very few circumstances where DKs are noticeably worse than other tanks. On EVERYTHING else in TotGC DKs are not noticeably worse than any other tank, when gear and player skill is equivalent. You can think DKs are worse all you want, the facts don't support it when player skill and gear are accounted for.

 

Panzerkin

Latest patch notes...

Death Knight
* Army of the Dead: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Army Ghoul damage dropped by 50%. Cannot be used in Arenas.
* Raise Ally: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
* Rune Strike: Threat generated by this ability increased by approximately 17%.

It appears the Devs have heard our concerns and acted to fix them. Hopefully it is enough.

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
- Friedrich von Schiller

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
- George F. Will

 

Melchior

I'm assuming the AotD change also brings a change to NotD, which would put the CD at 5 minutes. That does give Unholy a 5m CD shield wall of sorts if the points can be found.

I do wish they would have considered a Frost Presence change over a Rune Strike buff, but I can understand the sentiment of wanting to change as few dynamics as possible this late in the expansion.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Junon.png

 

• frmorrison

A 5 minute cooldown is pretty nice (10 is pretty nice as well), especially since they plan to turn off parry haste for most of the bosses in ICC. They addressed the threat nerf with a RS buff, so at least they responded to the important threat issue rather than Sunwell DK tanks (like Mages were dropped for Warlocks).

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Milano

NotD will reduce the cooldown by 4 minutes.

Doesn't it seem kinda wierd to buff RS threat and nothing else? I'm having problems generating proper tps on bosses as Blood tank with ~25% dodge + ~20% parry unbuffed. Especially at pulls when I don't get early RS going and have noone misdirecting me.

Most DK tanks, even experienced ones, seem to have problem keeping up with other tanks on threat am I right? I can't see -20% dodge and +17% RS threat helping.

 

• Darkside

I haven't had any serious problems with holding threat in the current tier of gear (outside of extreme circumstances), nor has the DK OT we use in our 25mans. While Death Knight threat may be a little behind other tanks at the current gear level, you shouldn't be having any major problems keeping the boss off of your DPS in most fights. If you do, yell at your DPS till they throttle back for the first 10s or so while you get everything in place.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

Illu

I don't think our threat is really bad, it's just less crazy than some other tank classes in certain situations. Especially early on. I mean, just take the pally taunt skill, if used to pull. It puts out way (over 2x) more snap threat than my actual pulling ability, and it's not even their main pull skill. We just take a while to get fully going. The DPS needs to know to check their threat early on with us.

But like I said, you can work around it okay. For example it helps a lot to have runic power somehow, since death coils(frost strikes) are quite good to alleviate that early on.

Regarding the army buff (most definitely a buff for tanks) I kind of wonder if it will really stand. The army channel is really awesome already, at times. I'm looking at you, <5ish%-Anub. Though I guess it will be a greater + for Unholy tanking, and it kind of looks like Unholy tanks will need the help in 3.3. Six min AotD means every fight after all, as applicable.

 

• Asphyxialol

Yes, per Premonitions tests and many parses DKs have been shown to be low man on the TPS pole (that isn't to say TPS should be an issue against DPS - we are still sufficient, just that the other tanks do it better). With the dodge reduction of Icecrown Radiance I did some very rough napkin math and found that 20% reduction in dodge was roughly a 9-10% reduction in total TPS, which is likely where their 17% number came from for the buff (about 40-45% of our TPS is generated via RS - so it makes sense to roughly double the value). However, RS is not 100% of our threat (obviously), and with quite a few fights does not even proc often enough to maintain aggro comparable to the other tank classes (due to RS on average accounting for 30-45% of our TPS through ToC/ToGC). Personally a raw 10% buff to threat done in frost presence would have been enough to compensate for the threat lost as a result of no dodge, but I believe Blizzard would be hesitant to buff that ability again.

 

ZaoZao

I assume that they did not want the Threatbuff to have a major impact on fields where our threat-generation was doing fine; ie AoE tanking (at least when specced a intelligently) does not have any problems, and Icecrown Radiance won't have an impact on that, and neither will the Runestrike Buff

Also a Threat buff for Runestrike would get smaller effects for ungeared tanks, whereas a Buff to Frost Presence would allow their Threat to make a considerable jump.

 

Illu

Speaking of that, I really hope no boss is like Acidmaw/Dreadscale while stationary, in Icecrown Citadel. It's definitely where I am doing the least threat, which is to be expected with rune Strike mechanics.. and it kind of illustrates its weakness nicely. Of course you can use different methods in that fight but.. seeing how many bosses seem to be some form of caster in there, it's this dread feeling I have.

 

saiyajinmaster

I wasn't having TOO many issues on the test server, but what I was noticing was that even if RS is buffed, it is itself becoming the problem it was supposed to fix - spiky threat. I mean the entire reason they added the skill was so that we wouldn't be hosed if we miss a few specials off the bat, but realistically it hurts FAR FAR more if I miss some RS's or, god forbid, don't get some dodges/parries and can't fire one off. I was noticing inital threat was far dicier on the PTR with the huge loss of avoidance, sure over time the % increase to its threat is probably fine for tps but I'm really not thrilled with the prospect of our ability to hold aggro being even more variable and random.

I mean, even though we're fine on live servers, I think we've all seen the huge bursts and dips we get already (Sometimes I can drop to like 5k and shoot up to 10-11k without MDs/Tricks purely on the strength of some good old RNG...on test it was more like 2-3k bursts sometimes which is scary low). I mean, let's face it DK tanking rotations are cake, it's not like there's a TON we can do about it besides pray.

 

Darsey

The only threat issues I had so far as a tank ware on the first 10 sec of the fight, if I dont get enough rune strikes, then an overeager lock or a hunter that didn't bothered to MD might get smacked, other then that I see no problem on a single target fight.

The icecrown change will make my threat at first even more spiky, but won't hurt the overall threat generated. I think that as long as there are really really tight enrage timers, then it is more of a quality of life issue more then anything else (as it is now too) But I see an issue if some really really tight enrage timers that require full nuke from the 1st or 2nd sec of the fight (any maybe it require the rogues to use tot on each other too so its not an option) then it might prove an issue.

EH wise druids are far ahead of everyone else when we are not talking about magicle damage , and paladins are quite ahead when it comes to magic EH.

EH would be an issue only if the fights would be fights that stress tanks at the EH aspect of the fight, but it seems that bosses gonna hit for less then they do now, so EH will matter less I guess and this difference would matter less because of that

 

Soulsbane

I've actually run into very serious threat issues as my DPS players have been gearing up a little faster while my threat hasn't scaled as well. While my avoidance, mitigation, and health have increased throughout encounter teirs, my threat has not. Each set of nerfs has decreased it. ToC tanking drops are decidedly lacking in Hit rating and the upgrades that give significant Strength or EH increases cost yet more Hit and Expertise. I'm having to deal with boomkins that refuse to spec into their threat redux talent (and have no threat dump), super-spiky fireball mages, rogues that Tricks each other for the damage increase instead of tanks, and our paladins almost never use Hand of Salvation. My threat can float around 5.5k tps, but that just doesn't cut it up against the dps in guild. The gear options are problematic, as every time I'm close to one-handers at current content, someone shows up or whores them, preventing me from wanting to try DW with 170-ish dps weapons.

So I am noticeably concerned with threat. A tank that dies can have healing strats changed. A tank that threat-caps dps is another matter.

 

Cesrae

I found the best way to do decent threat at the start of a fight is to do the following. Depending if you can get trix or not, I would usually hysteria a rogue. If not then I would hysteria myself, pop a dodge trinket, dnd, ps, it, hs, bt, hs, ds, empower rune weapon then unload hs. Theres always chance you get a bad start with miss, dodge or parry, and your dps should be watching out for that. I use this sequence for most fights and the only time I really dont get trix is at the start of hard mode anub since all the trix's are being saved for offtank and adds. You could even throw in Vamp in there before you use death strikes to convert runes.

 

Gelsk

Just throwing this out there, but is no one looking at PvP gear?
I tank using a 2 handed 245 pvp weapon (axe cause I'm an orc)
204 stamina+blue+red socket?
The resilience is kinda meh'ed out by the fact that there are no true 2 handed tank weapons in game.

 

level12wizard

Army of the Dead is a four second channel on the latest PTR build, although it isn't a documented change yet (and likely not 100% final).

I wouldn't call it much of a nerf to the tanking aspect of it, as it would generally be used against a single large hit (big bang, fusion punch, freezing slash, etc), but it's something to consider, as it will probably be seeing more use in 3.3 with the halved cooldown.

 

Israfel

@Gelsk: If you can get an arena rating that high, I'd say go for it if you need the stamina.
--------------------
I've noticed in the OP that the build for the Unholy tank spec is a different one than the current live build. Would this cause Unholy to play worse off than Blood at the moment?

I thought some attention should have been brought to the error.

 

Cesrae

I currently use the pvp il258 weapon for tanking. Im waiting for hard mode anub weapons to drop. But if you capable of putting together a decent comp every season, 2200 is not hard to get and will hold you over.

 

Goldengiff

1) DK threat is ENORMOUSLY dependent on your weapon. It should honestly be the first priority of any taking DK to get a current ilvl weapon, and it's your responsibility to make sure your guild officers and raid leaders know how important that is.

2) If your raiders are stupid, selfish hogs who can't be bothered to do the correct thing by transferring threat to the MT, especially for a DK on the pull, then they need to be given a lesson in basic math or told they aren't good enough and sat out. We aren't Superman, we're just tanks. We can't hold threat off idiocy~

 

Lanlaorn

While you're correct that your DPS should take steps to meet you halfway, the problem lies in the fact that they wouldn't have to make DPS sacrifices (spec into threat talents, not tricks each other, etc.) for the other tanks.

This topic seems to border on the whining threshold for these forums so I won't really elabroate in this post, but I also feel the OP's point of difficulty in upgrading weapons is valid. DPS weapons are always far more in demand than tanking weapons, particularly two-handers with the popularity of Rets, DKs and the 2-at-a-time use by Fury Warriors. This is a unique meta-game disadvantage for our spec that other tanks wouldn't need to take into accunt.

 

Lucke

This - I've been doing this and even given the wasted stat of resilience it still generally ends up being a phenominal 2h tanking weapon for us.