The Four Different Tanks (Comparisons)

[Duriensbane]

Currently, no tank or person can reach 100% true avoidance. Simply put, DR kills high avoidance. If he strings to many in a row hes looking at a long strike of unavoidable attacks, since he will constantly be taking more and more hits while his DR slowly falls off. High armor and Hp is about the only thing thats going to save him, that and DK solo target tps blows, yes he may have an advantage, but in the long run the fight, dps depending might take longer since he wont have nearly as much of a buffer as the rest of us.

[Satorri]

Currently, no tank or person can reach 100% true avoidance. Simply put, DR kills high avoidance. If he strings to many in a row hes looking at a long strike of unavoidable attacks, since he will constantly be taking more and more hits while his DR slowly falls off. High armor and Hp is about the only thing thats going to save him, that and DK solo target tps blows, yes he may have an advantage, but in the long run the fight, dps depending might take longer since he wont have nearly as much of a buffer as the rest of us.

1.) No one can reach 100% avoidance currently. True, but in my gear, frost spec'd on the PTR with the new DK buffs, I sit, self-buffed (horn of winter only, no CDs popped) at 70% avoidance on the sheet. Popping Unbreakable Armor and Lichborne at the same time adds 30% avoidance not subject to diminishing returns. It is not unreasonable to think that future gear will allow DK's to pass the actual full avoid mark (even though I am well aware that raid boss avoidance is actually a shade less than what you see on your sheet). DR makes it so that avoidance isn't an exponentially scaling factor, but the caps for parry/dodge alone add up to over 120%.

2.) DK's are capable of both high armor and high HP, I have higher than warriors with similar level gear already, and my armor is about to get buffed significantly (in my gear, 3.0.8 adds about 4k armor to my sheet).

3.) If you think DK single target threat blows, you need to go meet some better DKs. I tank bosses frequently, and I've managed to surpass Arms Warriors, Frostfire Mages, Hunters (who don't waste CD's on FD), and Rogues (who don't remember they have a Feint button or aren't wasting the GCD on it), who are pushing 4500 dps. In 25-man raids I can now sustain above that on TPS for boss fights. It's the player more than the class, now more than ever. A skilled warrior, pally, or bear with equivalent gear will match my pace just fine, but DK's are not somehow left behind.

4.) Going back to something you posted previously, Pally threat does have a particular advantage since Seal of Light counts towards their threat, however it is neither consistant nor reliable because overhealing does 0 threat. Only encounters where there is raid damage will this provide a threat buff, and only proportional to the actual amount that it heals (at half the healing converted to threat). There is a reason they're fixing it in the next patch, but it is not universal, nor do any pally tanks I know actually depend on it.


Riddle me this, what DKs have you been running with that have been giving you such a low opinion of our class? Or are you just going on what you've "heard?"

[Redfoxx]

Unfortunately, being tanks, I doubt many of us have managed to run with another person tanking. I know I for one, have not run with anyone other then myself tanking. I would not mind running with another tank, but I don't see anyone else Main Tanking my groups but me.

[Lightmgl]

Currently, no tank or person can reach 100% true avoidance. Simply put, DR kills high avoidance. If he strings to many in a row hes looking at a long strike of unavoidable attacks, since he will constantly be taking more and more hits while his DR slowly falls off. High armor and Hp is about the only thing thats going to save him, that and DK solo target tps blows, yes he may have an advantage, but in the long run the fight, dps depending might take longer since he wont have nearly as much of a buffer as the rest of us.

What does DR have anything to do with a long strike of unavoidable attacks? Theres nothing in the game to prevent that. DR is supposed to make that level of avoidance unreachable (whatever number Blizzard deems approriate). It is obviously not doing that as DKs are hitting avoidance at Sunwell levels and Blizzard felt the need to put in a gigantic debuff when we reached that point before. Right now DKs are there at the beginning of the xpac. Even with DR how much more avoidance will they gain by the end, 5%, 10%? 10% is awfully close, thats 80% and when you start lumping in -hit debuffs on top of that you don't hit 100% but at that point is anything going to kill you with even half awake healers and a couple of nice avoidance cooldowns?

The problem is the baseline. DKs get talents, runeforges, and procs that give them a huge baseline advantage of 13% more avoidance before diminishing returns even start. What this means is that if all gear is equal between the two characters the DK should still be looking at a 13% advantage over the other tanks regardless of what level of gear they are at. We'll just both gain another 4% or 5% next tier and they will still have the fixed advantage only it will be over a smaller % of landed attacks which makes it even more effective.

4500 DPS is low for what I'm looking at. We regularly see 5000-6000 DPS from a number of classes (Boomkin, Fury War, Hunters, Mages, Shadow Priests) and HAT rogues can get as high as 8k if we have 2+ of them. Our guild also doesn't give any threat build time. They start shooting before the tank is next to the mob usually.

I'm yet to see our DK break a sustained 5k TPs. Maybe hes doing something wrong but it is not enough to hold off that in most fights. When you apply it to something even trickier like Malygos he is completely dusted. Me and the Paladin on the other hand can put up 6.5k+ TPS sustained under the same circumstances at the moment. Its no problem even if we get unlucky.

I'll preach for DKs about everything else but their single target threat is not scaling fast enough. Actually I have a strong suspicion that nobody's tank threat is going to scale fast enough except for maybe druids. DKs are just worse off because they have less overhead for threat then the other tanks so they fall short against fully geared and fully skilled DPS right now. It takes all I have now in an impale/deep wounds build to match our best DPSers and if they gain another 10% I absolutely have to gain another 10% from the same gear upgrades which just does not seem viable. The amount of offensive stats it would take to match that would be nuts. The only times I pull ahead are lucky strings and fights where theres more than one target.

[Duriensbane]

3.) If you think DK single target threat blows, you need to go meet some better DKs. I tank bosses frequently, and I've managed to surpass Arms Warriors, Frostfire Mages, Hunters (who don't waste CD's on FD), and Rogues (who don't remember they have a Feint button or aren't wasting the GCD on it), who are pushing 4500 dps. In 25-man raids I can now sustain above that on TPS for boss fights.

Your saying you managed to surpass, that right there tells me that your average tps is low. Honestly for any tank, there shouldnt be a question of being able to manage tps. Your either gonna do it or your not. And if your basing that off of when your not tanking, you have threat abilitly built into your spec, IE frost presence produces more threat, ive had DK's pull off me in dps gear becuase they forgot they were in frost, well yeah your gonna pull when your not wasting gcd's for avoidance.

When i talk about true avoidance, im talking about what you are when your standing there, not buttons you click, thats cheating, a rogue can say they've hit 100% avoidance with evasion up, but that doesnt mean hes the next ragin tank in the guild.

[Lightmgl]

I'm trying not to belittle DKs here either. I know there are skilled DKs out there, ours amazes me in the fights he tanks. I get fired up about scaling stuff cause it centered on warriors for basically an entire expansion. I know how much it really sucks to have to deal with mechanics that aren't gonna let you keep up and are gonna require a ton of attention. They alleviated that necessity for all of the other tanking classes a ton and there is no reason that DK's should be stuck with something that is likely going to become a problem in MTing. This is going to even stand out more if they start creating these hard mode fights where there could be extreme DPS requirements.

I'm a tremendous fan of being able to have a large selection of tanks as its often really annoying since they've typically made up the smallest percentage of our guild and an even smaller percentage of the playerbase for a long time and can often be a raidstopper or a guildstopper. Encouraging more people to play tanks and bring tanks is a good thing. You just don't want it going out of control and cutting off classes/specs from doing this.

[Duriensbane]

I completely agree with Lightmgl, today our Pala tank decided to call it quits again. This leaving us a tank short. Which for us isnt good, since we have 2 tanks which often take long abstances and are gonna restrict our progression towards 3 drakes. Very shortly afterwards myself and a a few friends were doing 10 man sarth, just to get i completed for the week, and i was talking to our DK CL, who was tanking the 1 drake we left up, and asked him to start looking for a DK tank. I personally want to add a tank to our tank group, not because i want to be fair, more so i want to have something different in the line up, we have 2 dks that have 540 def min gear, and the CL is expressing the want to tank. And im all for it. It sorta feels like another brut type fight comming. Short enrage timer and dps is going to be of the highest requirement.

During sunwell we brought 2 tanks for Brut, 1 druid for dps and threat, and 1 prot warr for a chance for the healers to get a breather, and i have a feeling its going to be the same way, but rather a DK to push 2.5k dps while keeping up threat. If this is so i want one by my side so we can get him up to par for new content. I do not want to put any bad talk or belittlement on DK's as tanks, nor will i tell a DK tank that he cant "do" what i can do, since i know they can. I just want to see it for myself.

[Satorri]

Your saying you managed to surpass, that right there tells me that your average tps is low. Honestly for any tank, there shouldnt be a question of being able to manage tps. Your either gonna do it or your not. And if your basing that off of when your not tanking, you have threat abilitly built into your spec, IE frost presence produces more threat, ive had DK's pull off me in dps gear becuase they forgot they were in frost, well yeah your gonna pull when your not wasting gcd's for avoidance.

When i talk about true avoidance, im talking about what you are when your standing there, not buttons you click, thats cheating, a rogue can say they've hit 100% avoidance with evasion up, but that doesnt mean hes the next ragin tank in the guild.

You infer incorrectly. I say that I surpass threat from dpsers that I watch other tanks fail to do so. I have about 15-20% better threat when I'm tanking than when I'm not getting swung at, class mechanic bliss of Rune Strike. Though it'd be kind of interesting to see what happens to my threat in dps gear and frost presence.

I was using the Lichborne/UA example simply to point out that there was a condition in which you would be wrong. I see what you're trying to say. though.

Hopefully you'll find a good DK to show you what we're capable of. The class as much or more than any other, it seems, has HUGE scaling factors with player skill.

[Juon]

You infer incorrectly. I say that I surpass threat from dpsers that I watch other tanks fail to do so. I have about 15-20% better threat when I'm tanking than when I'm not getting swung at, class mechanic bliss of Rune Strike. Though it'd be kind of interesting to see what happens to my threat in dps gear and frost presence.

I was using the Lichborne/UA example simply to point out that there was a condition in which you would be wrong. I see what you're trying to say. though.

Hopefully you'll find a good DK to show you what we're capable of. The class as much or more than any other, it seems, has HUGE scaling factors with player skill.

I concur with what he says, Dks can be very solid tanks with both superb AOE and single target threat.

The only reason I can think of why DK tanks have yet to overpopulate the servers, like paladin tanks did in TBC, is that DK tanking has a tough learning curve. I have yet to see one good player roll a DK and not perform significantly better than his previous class in both DPS and Tanking.

DK tanks are just like DPS paladins in TBC. Unpopular but undeniably awesome once you have seen a really good one. A lot of people didnt believe paladins could sustain dps better than most classes pre-tbc, until they see one that sustained close to 3k dps pre-tbc.