Yeah, these things stack multiplicatively, not additively.

Definately gonna miss lichborne, its the fact they haven't replaced it with anything/still made it useful, they could've easily changed the mechanic without removing it completely from tank usage, the only good thing to come out of this is that a good keybinding I normally use for it is now free :P

Id like to see another reactive type move in its place like rune strike, simply taking away another button of tanking ain't gonna make it more fun

I've been messing around with my gear on PTR a little bit, comparing to other tanks in my guild, to see how we will compare now. I was mostly watching our best geared warrior. Me and him are in argueably best in slot items for every slot.

My stats on live:

25.72% Dodge.
30.90% Parry (incl. Blade Barrier)
31054 HP.
28088 Armor

PTR:

25.72% Dodge.
20.90% Parry.
31054 HP.
28088 Armor

The warrior I was comparing to is rocking:

21.86% Dodge
19.85% Parry
18.04% Block
30506 HP.
23526 Armor.

However, some of the rating changes allow me to be less reliant on using Expertise items. I swapped gear around and go to to the following stats:

27.34% Dodge
22.51% Parry
31131 HP
29032 Armor

I was using Swordshattering + Repelling Charge in these gear setups. Note however, I'm relying on Unfaltering Knight to get me crit immune in this gear setup. Whether or not thats a bad thing, beats me. Although we took a big hit in avoidance in the form of Blade Barrier, we are still miles ahead in avoidance compared to warriors, have more HP and a ton more armor. I'm very unfamiliar with the block mechanic, so I'll steer clear of discussing how much it actually mitigates, but I'm going to guess it'll not push them ahead of us. Do note, this gear setup is gemmed very defensively (stamina and dodge gems), so I'm at exactly 26% expertise on PTR but I'm very low on hit (146) so I'd have to compensate with a hit food buff, but luckily for me my warrior tank partner is a Draenei so I'm currently thinking it's not going to be a big deal. Time will tell. However, I think people need to calm down. The sky has not yet fallen.


To the ground indeed.

P.S: Have they changed Lichborne to not be usable when you're feared? Or what the hell are people talking about when they say it's not a "reactive" skill?

I think it's a common misconception, but lichborne works fine to break stuff. What doesn't work is Icebound Fortitude to break out of stun locks, which is where the idea of lichborne not being reactive comes from I believe, since even in beta it used to work that way. Or maybe they changed it at some point, been too long and my memory sucks.

Also interested in knowing if the expertise changes are intended. When someone reported them, a blue said they'll look into it, so it seems they weren't aware they increased it along with armor pen(announced in patch notes) and haste(announced in a blue post).

Also about your higher avoidance set, did you drop 4pc T7 for it? Was checking out stuff with chardev and couldn't really increase my avoidance all that much even using dodge/stam gems and dodge prismatics instead of pure stam, and only switching one piece of T7.

Yes, I don't use 4t7. I don't think it's worth it. Let me whip up a profile on chardev.

[e] chardev.org v6 ~ a World of Warcraft character planner

Not sure why it's not exactly the same stats as on PTR, must've missed something but it's close enough.

One thing to keep in mind when comparing yourself to a warrior is that the extra armor for a DK basically makes up for the difference in the Warrior's mitigation from having defensive stance, although with the new 5% mitigation boost from Blade Barrier Death Knight mitigation should be slightly ahead on non-blocked swings. Overall I think these changes were honestly warranted (70%+ avoidance with the first tier of raiding gear was pretty absurd), and bring us back down in line with Paladins and Warriors, although Druids seem to still have a pretty significant advantage over now all 3 plate tanks.

There's been a great deal of griping about the loss of the currently broken WoTN for progression tanking... but has anyone taken a serious look at an Acclimation build for some of the Ulduar content? I tried one out on Iron Council (Steelbreaker) last night and was resisting 18k of his Fusion Punch and only taking 14k.

It's possible that the secondary effect of "breaking" WoTN was to make us think outside the box a bit.

Have you selected DK as your class? Because it sure as hell takes FFD into account for me.

No offense, but 18% for one tree is not even remotely close to all DK tanks having 18% from talents. Furthermore, you're ignoring the fact that after these PTR changes, DK's will have the lowest avoidance from talents of any tank.

Avoidance from talents:
Warriors: 10%
Paladins: 10%
Druids: 10%
Frost DK's: 8%
Blood/Unholy DK's: 5%

Lets compare straight mitigation from talents now:
Warriors: 10% (Defensive Stance isn't a talent, but it is what it is.)
Paladins: 9% (ignoring BoS, since it can technically be cast on any tank)
Druids: 12%
DK's: 5%

I'm adopting a wait-and-see perspective at the moment, but I'm not going to pretend that these changes in and of themselves aren't highly alarming.

Guess I should have worded that better, I didn't mean another reactive ability LIKE lichborne, I just meant a reactive ability, the numbers compared to warriors don't seem to look too good atm, I think we will settle into the role of magic boss tank, we all know blizz said they don't want to do this, but with sweeping changes like this Im not sure what Our advantage is over warriors anymore in most situations

There isn't supposed to BE an advantage over warriors, all the tanks are supposed to be on the same footing, of course we have a little advantage due to less magic damage taken. But blizzard is trying to BALANCE all of these classes and not make one more useful than the other for normal things. Bring the player, not the class.

You probably need to include runeforging in any avoidance discussion. When you do that, it's always an 8% avoidance gap on live, regardless of which spec you're talking about for the DK. 5% more parry than a paladin or warrior from blade barrier and 3-4% from runeforging, all of which wasn't subject to DR (granted that comes at the expense of an enchant, but I'm also not including forceful deflection which provides a pretty meaningful amount of avoidance).

Any mitigation discussion needs to include the armor differences. A warrrior at 28k armor + defensive stance is equal to a DK at 33k armor. The DK will always have more armor than the other plate tanks because frost presence adds more armor than just a shield. It's pretty silly to argue that you're missing a "stance" modifier when it's already imbedded in the armor multiplier for frost presence. And no, you're not going to hit the armor cap anytime soon with the 3.1 version of UA.

I think the real question is if the 5% from blade barrier keeps up with block values from other tanks. It seems a little low if you look at it that way. They really seem hellbent on keeping % modifiers for every DK mitigation ability, when the other 3 tanking classes don't have that same requirement.

They have said they want all 3 trees viable for tank and dps both so nerfing a deep blood tank talent to get us to consider a deep frost tank talent is highly unlikely IMO.

I think a lot of the PTR changes they make are just to see if the players come up with any creative combinations they have not considered internally. They have simulators for the combat engines internally so they can see directly how various bosses do vs each of the 4 tanks.

You can stop including runeforging with the implementation of the new tanking enchant.

1. We assume tanks are balanced (probably not true)
2. We assume encounter damage is balanced to tanks (more likely true)
3. We assume such balances take into account runeforging (likely)
4. We assume that this change happens in a vacuum (which is definitely not true)

For the sake of argument let us assume these four things are true (they may not be but its easier to make the point if we assume they are and then deal with the consequences of them not being true after).

Now all things being equal, the new enchant is an increase of X damage reduction. All fights are then balanced to do X more damage (assumption 2). This leads to two possibilities. Either the contribution of runeforging enchants (here after referred to as Y) is greater or less than that of X . If Y is greater than or equal to X, then there is no benefit to DK and all fights have increased by X (assumption 2) while DKs have stayed the same, thus nerfing DKs by X. If Y is less than X, then DKs loses runeforging and is nerfed by what they lost, as the fights have become harder, minus what they gained (assumptions 1 and 3) or X-(X-Y), which works out to Y. As a result the implementation of any tank enchant is a nerf to DKs (assumption 4).

Now, if assumption 1 or 3 does not hold, then this is still a nerf, however, it is an intended nerf to bring them in line.
If assumption 2 does not hold, then this is merely a buff to other tanking classes, and nothing to a DK
Finally, if this change is part of a larger attempt to reign in DKs (breaking assumption 4), then this nerf is balanced out in the equation elsewhere.

We can no longer look at runeforging in a vacuum with the implementation of the new tanking enchant. Even if it is not as good as runeforging (which is likely) this is still a detriment to DKs.

A few bits I've noticed on the PTR i found worth bringing up:

1) HB swapped with HC, thus requiring 51 points into frost to get it, also meaning you can no longer take impurity with it, nurfing frost/unholy dps specs, also meaning you must choose between HB and UB as a tank. HB now also deals double it's previous damage, but is a 10 second cooldown up from 5, on paper it shouldn't make a difference but i foresee it causing problems later on, making rime procs far less useful in my opinion.

2) Magic Suppression is now only a 3 point talent, and grants 2/4/6% magic damage reduction at all times, combined with frost presence granting a 15% reduction, the 3 talent points bring our magic damage reduction to 21% constant. However though I haven't confirmed it yet, I've been told frost presence now only gives 10% magic damage reduction, down from 15%,

3) Blade barrier now grants 1/2/3/4/5% damage reduction rather then 2/4/6/8/10% parry chance while blood runes are on cooldown. This does hurt our avoidance a bit, but means we'll be able to essentially reach 80% damage reduction constant before cooldowns, assuming high enough armor value.

4) Necrosis and BCB changed, boosting the viability of DW specs again, though they'll still be missing out on their howling blast+impurity combo. Necrosis now does proc on both main and offhand again, and BCB has had it's cooldown timer removed, however without the 25% bonus spell damage from AP boosting the howling blast hits, and the increased CD on howling blast it's self, i don't think it'll be as viable as it once was.

5) Bone shield now has a 2 minute CD, up from 1 minute, when combined with the blade barrier changes i dont see a way DK's can keep 75%+ uptime on it as I've seen before for boss fights.

6) Lichborn no longer grants 25% chance for the target to miss, making it nearly worthless for tanks anymore as anything beyond a way to avoid fears, sleeps, and charms.

Those were the 6 changes i most felt affected by, there are others i didn't mention, but those were all to make a point which is simple. More and more as i watch the changes they make to our tanking skills i begin to wonder if 50/0/21 is going to be the best there is to offer. We lose out on the bonus armor value, lowering our damage reduction for the times we do get hit, but you gain far more aoe threat in blood while maintaining it's warrior style of tanking. Sadly i think i'll be going frost tank over my current unholy, simply for the overall better mitigation, my biggest fear is my overall loss in TPS over my current unholy setup, and the projected unholy changes first shown which offered comparable mitigation with an even higher TPS gain.
[/2 cents]

Hopefully the DRW glyph is changed as well, to reflect the damage nerf. They said they wanted to cut the damage in half but double its duration, correct? Hopefully the glyph is increased to 20 seconds.

I think if they changed Lichborne's cooldown to bring it in line with something like Berserker Rage it would be a bit more useful. Keeping it at a 3 minute cooldown is pretty absurd though, considering it no longer gives 25% miss and bosses who use fear use it far more frequently than once every three minutes.

What buffs would those be?

Changing it from 45% increased crit damage to 15% increased damage is not a buff. Raid buffed you should be around 40% crit if you're a dps dk. Add in the 9% Oblit, KM stuff and you're probably looking at a parsed critrate of 60-70%. That means the talent change is roughly a 50% decrease in value.

I'm positive Dks will get buffed again before the patch because they're in a sorry sorry state right now.

Threat-wise they are buffs. Frost Strike maybe being an exception because of Killing Machine. Tanks don't usually have crit rates high enough to tip those talents into the nerf category.

Warriors will take less magic damage unless the DK has a cooldown up.

10% mit from def stance, 6% from imp def. I'm not sure how they're stacking these days, but at worst it's 16%.

DK will have 10% from frost presence, maybe 5% from blade barrier. Unholy could spec into 5% less magic damage, and blood could spec into a chance to parry 30% of a spells damage.

My tanking set has ~15% unbuffed. In a raid thats what 25%? Blood and Frost tanks will have at least the option to get another 9% to crit with their oblits too.

Sure, for unholy tanks right now the change is probably a slight buff or at worst a break even. Once they have Uludar gear I'm guessing even tanks would be better off with the crit damage version.

Actually, Unholy would be able to spec for an additional 6% magic reduction and Frost could get an additional 4%. Blood would be the only one with lower passive magic mitigation.