The ever-helpful Ghostcrawler hit the forums late yesterday with a slew of changes to
Death Knight tanking in the form of both bug fixes and buffs. The single biggest "buff" is actually a fairly significant bug fix;
Death Knights had half the untalented, ungeared dodge of a
Warrior or
Paladin, and that was definitely never intended. Between that and a change to
Blade Barrier (it's currently activated with all runes on cooldown; it's being changed to activate with only Blood runes on cooldown), Death Knights should see a significant improvement to their avoidance. Threat generation is also getting a nice boost, as Blizzard recognized that Death Knights suffered badly whenever key moves failed to land.
Rune Strike is becoming a reactive ability like the Warrior's
Revenge, and
Frost Strike can no longer be dodged, blocked, or parried.
Death and Decay has also been changed to be more competitive with
Consecration and
Thunder Clap, which is consistent with
the overall trend toward AoE tanking effectiveness.
I've healed a number of Death Knight tanks in 5-mans now (you'll be hearing from my grumpy self about this soon) and recognized a few early versions of these issues, certainly in the form of
Blade Barrier's often-spotty uptime. While I'm glad that DK's are getting more consistent threat generation, I have to admit that my real concern is the amount of burst they seem to take (something
others have noticed as well), so I'm keeping an eye on the tweaks being made.
Thanks to Doug for writing in!Tags: 5-man, 5-man-tanking, 5-mans, AoE, blade-barrier, consecration, death-and-decay, death-knight, death-knight-tanking, forums, frost-strike, ghostcrawler, paladin, revenge, rune-strike, thunder-clap, warrior
Filed under: Forums, Wrath of the Lich King, Death Knight, Buffs, Raiding, Expansions, Instances, News items, Analysis / Opinion, Warrior, Paladin, Druid
Sep 30th 2008 at 1:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Patrick Sep 30th 2008 1:22PM
As a holy pal in beta, I've noticed the bust damage issue as well. It's gotten to the point that I usually have a holy light casting at the very onset of most bosses in anticipation of a huge initial damage burst.
I haven't noticed any threat issues.
Merko Sep 30th 2008 1:18PM
its pretty simple what blizzard needs to do for DK's
... mitigation...
prot warrior - SBV mitigates incoming dmg
prot pally - SBV mitigates incoming dmg
feral druid - high hp / high armor mitigates incoming dmg
death knights - lacking in this department severely (yes they buffed the frost presence for more hp but still not enough to counter the incoming dmg spikes)
Dotixi Sep 30th 2008 1:27PM
I hope the 30sec cool down is being reduced, or the increased threat generation will be a mute point...unless of course it's a massively huge buff to threat.
Cable Sep 30th 2008 1:59PM
Did you mean moot point?
Dotixi Sep 30th 2008 2:23PM
Yes, but that's not really relevant.
WTB dodge fix for hunters Sep 30th 2008 1:40PM
The dodge that needs fixing is for hunters. Go check that debacle out:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679634482&sid=2000
Dotixi Sep 30th 2008 1:50PM
Thank you for reminding us that hunters complain a lot.
Geranamo Sep 30th 2008 2:27PM
Not all hunters complain alot just the stupid ones, which I guess is around 95% ;)
Pfooti Sep 30th 2008 2:11PM
What are base Death Knight armor values looking like, while appropriately talented (3/3 toughness) and in frost presence? How do those numbers compare to base warrior / paladin numbers?
My original math indicated that these numbers should be similar, that DKs got a sizeable armor multiplier while in Frost Presence, in order to make up for the 5-8k armor they weren't getting from their shields. Has this changed?
Merko Sep 30th 2008 3:02PM
The armor numbers between a prot war and a tank spec DK are very similar...
unfortunately 60% damage reduction +800 blocked is a ton more mitigation than 60% damage +0 blocked...
Pfooti Sep 30th 2008 3:15PM
Huh, I can't reply to a reply. Anyway, if the armor numbers are the same, then the remaining issue is: does parry + dodge on a DK roughly equal parry + block + dodge on a warrior? The old warrior model, where parry + dodge + block > 100 all the time to avoid crushings no longer applies, right? Shield block isn't up 100% of the time any more, so block is still the domain of the RNG.
This should be where the Blizzard Devs are pushing - to provide enough avoidance and mitigation, but via different pathways. There's still stuff like Bone Armor and other talents that provide additional mitigation to the right builds as well.
Merko Sep 30th 2008 4:12PM
at the moment its as if blizzard wants a class that is easy to do mediorce but tough to excel(learning when to blow cooldowns/different specs for different occasions)...
with icebound fortitude and unbreakable armor(frost) that should be 32-38 seconds of improved damage mitigation
with icebound fortitude and vampiric blood(blood) that should be 32-38 seconds of improved damage mitigation / improved heals
with icebound fortitude and bone shield(unholy) that should be 12 seconds + 4 hits of improved damage mitigation.
currently dodge + parry + block is marginally higher for a prot war... however the DK parry + dodge is higher than a prot warriors parry + dodge due to the parry mechanic of a DK.
Clbull Nov 21st 2008 9:38AM
Well Dodge, Block and Parry are important mitigation stats, thats true.
But they're not quite as essential as they used to be. Beforehand, they were essential for avoiding crushing blows, but now with the removal of them, you can just Block, Dodge and Parry your way to reducing damage even more
br Sep 30th 2008 2:45PM
Once again, lots of links - zero to the actual post.
Breue Sep 30th 2008 2:48PM
Soooo many links, and zero to the actual forum post. Wowinsider, please please cut down on the useless links (anything that starts with wowinsider/category/X .)
PeeWee Sep 30th 2008 3:03PM
Did you stop to read what's under the the "Source"-link in the article footer?
Ratoo Sep 30th 2008 3:07PM
Except for the big link below the post called "source". Yeah, that could never link to the source of the article. They just use a random link generator and it just happened to be called "source".
Allison Robert Sep 30th 2008 3:39PM
Sorry about that, Breue. I typically link the article's main focus in the first line and I'll fix that. But yes, PeeWee's right, any time that it's not immediately obvious what's being linked, it's always in the Source button at the bottom left of the article.
zappo Sep 30th 2008 3:30PM
Dumb question, but what specs are people tanking with? I was thinking of tanking as dual wielding blood, and dps frost on my second death knight, but I was wondering if everything had separated to a tanking/dps/pvp sort of thing or not. I'm sure I have that backwards
Merko Sep 30th 2008 3:39PM
its purely a matter of spec / content ...
at the moment for raid OT and aoe/support tanking unholy seems to be the most viable... however for raid MT... boss variant either the blood and/or frost trees seem more apt for tanking do to damage mitigation/threat/maxing hp