My guild is adamant in their belief that Death Knight as a tank is not as good as warriors or druids for raid bosses 99.9% of the time. The arguments I heard are that the class is "too dependent on cooldowns" and "overly reliant on oshit buttons".
I honestly don't understand all of their concerns.
Mostly my experience comes from Heroic endbosses and the few raid encounters I was allowed to tank as MT, but I haven't seen either as problematic at all. Granted when runes are on cd a DK can't react as fast, but every tanking class has a niche, don't they? Paladins need mana, warriors and druids rage. And since when is having more oshit buttons that could help a problem? I personally only use oshit buttons no more often than on my late warrior.
The only relevant point I think is that if you make a warrior tank DPS they would perform a lot worse than a DK since being ragestarved.
What's the community's take on this? What are the experiences of other DK tanks? Are there any successful DK tanks doing regular 10/25 man raids? Do you get labeled as "ill-suited to bosses, go OT/dps"? What is the opinion of the other three tanking classes?
What do you advise I point out to my guildmates to make them believe that a DK tank is as good as to tank raids as any?
(I'm aware of the upcoming changes to the class. However I think the situation is not nearly as bad as my guild thinks. I'd just wanted to know if I'm harboring some kind of delusion here...)
Generally people are kind of hard to convince that the "new kid on the block" isn't bad. Kind of like how there would be a new person at school and by the end of the first day there are 900 rumor's about them.
It simply takes time, and a skilled player of that class to convince them that they are just as good as the other 3 tanking classes.
I was under the impression that GC himself said that DK's were too reliant on their cooldowns to tank, hence the upcoming changes.
I wouldn't go so far as to call them panic buttons which carry the connotations that they're use once get out of jail-free cards and really only for emergencies. Which can lead to the perception that DK's rely on gimmicks.
I believe the MT for my guild right now is DK though (I just hit 80 so I haven't raided with them), so I don't believe DK's can't handle the MT role. But there are definitely perception issues.
DK will be fine. Plenty of evidence incl Blizz own view on the topic.
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Talent Coherency and Death Knight tanking.
Yes, they are overly reliant on emergency cooldowns, that's why they have plenty. They are smoothening it slightly so dks don't get zomggibbed while on cooldown, but that's still how they work.
i lead a guild that are 12/15 in naxx atm, but i wont allow a DK to MT, Not becuase they cant but becuase "anything they can do, we can do better" referring to Warriors/Druids, i spose im just stuck im my old skool ways i mean it took me months before i started to belive prot palas were viable, But as mentioned DK's are to reliant on CD's and good timeing, The op mentions rage, any warrior or druid that is main tanking has infinate rage on most fights, Not the case with runes.
I believe the OP was referring to making a prot warrior DPS when not tanking something in regards to the rage-starvation. Regardless, this is an issue that's going to touch a few different areas of the same subject. DK's are a completely viable class to tank with and I'll reserve opinion on whether the warriors, druids and paladins can do anything a DK can do better, or vice versa. Blizzard will iron out mechanics as they do, tune and re-tune if necessary.
The biggest issue will continue to be perception. There is a saying that holds true, unfortunately. Perception becomes reality. People will read a lot, play with a few below-average players and/or simply finds ways to knock the new guy down. People will talk to other people about how inferior DK's are, others will see posts while trolling forums and treat things as fact. As a previous poster said, it'll take time and skilled players to change the opinion. It took some time for tankadins to catch on in a lot of places and it'll take some patience, some open minds and solid players, but DK's will be fine.
Last edited by Cayleb; 12-10-2008 at 04:00 AM. Reason: Spelling is bad at 7AM!
Dk's are fine... But dont expect to wals in and immideatly become the mt.
Here is a little breakdown on how we funtion(You can draw your own conclutions if you want to compare us to other tanks)
As a naxx ready dk in mostly blues i got more or less the same armor health as a warrior/paladin. I have 60% avoidance in raids and I'm using boneshield and icebound fortitude actively to mitigat damage. So where does this leave me as a mt?
60% of hits are avoided
Boneshield have an average uptime of 25 sec and gives 40% dmg reduction
Icebound fortitude has an uptime of 12 sec and gives 50% dmg reduction
On full hits i take 10% more damage then a shield wearer.
So on the 40% that is not mitigated 33% is with boneshield up and 20% is with IF up. This means roughly 50% of 40% will be full hits and 50% of the hits will be reduced alot.
In the end it means we are taking full hits 20% of the time and those full hits are larger then all other tanks. Those 20% is what people are refering to when they say dk's are spiky, because we go from taking little or no damage to taking the hardes hits and we dont have a huge healthpool like druids to soak up the potential damage.
Does this make us poor tanks? Imo no. Frome experience i have always had a trinket or lichborne ready if i was having a rough time during those 20%.
With every tank able to main tank people sometimes forget that we are no longer in Burning Crusade... calling someone a raid leader is still there, but calling someone a MT is definately a thing of the past (if you have 3-4 skilled tanks)
As a frost DK i have my place 21 second IF gets me through Maexxna's raid wide web wrap. Dragons (maly, sapph, sarth) are easily handled with acclimation and frost aura.
Our prot warriors are invaluable for threat races and general mitigation fights
Our prot pally makes mitigation and aoe fights easiest.
and our druid... when we need an hp sponge, his enormous hp pool makes it easymode.
at this point if you have capable and well tested tanks by only using one tank to tank everything your raid leader and you are really gimping your raid and making everybody's job more difficult.
All DK's have been tanking as DK's since November 13th, give or take playing in beta and the time it took to level to a point where there was stuff to tank. None of them have experienced MTing MC, BWL, AQ40, Naxx40, SSC, TK, BT, Hyjal, Sunwell....as a Death Knight. Sure, things change over time and warriors today are much different than a warrior stepping into Vael for the first time but there is something to be said for all that experience.
A fair number of DKs are rerolls from classes that have never tanked before. Rolling /need against a dude who had been a mediocre mage 3 months ago is a little disconcerting. Because you can, doesn't mean you should. Many tanks are fixtures in their guild and have been a rock for them and a known quantity. Damn few people can honestly say they have truly earned the MT spot in a month of live server play as a new character. There are rare cases of a tank rerolling to a DK I suppose but it has much less to do with the class mechanics than it does with experience, attitude and resume.
your hat may be nice, but I have the little white tank top that says Legendary right across my boobs. I win. (or more correctly, H wins)
Originally Posted by Horacio
Well i have heard we are the new huntards
I would not worry about it to much though, tanking is a state of mind regardless of class imo. If you dont like tanking you wont stay tank spec for long. It has happened to all the other classes and it will happen to dk's aswell. Saying we cant tank because we was not around to mt MC is streaching it though, but i get what you are trying to say.
The third farthest progressed raid guild on my server has a DK tanking raid content for their "A team."
However, they used to be the second farthest progressed....not sure if them using a DK tank has had an impact on their progression or not, but it still demonstrates that DKs can raid tank.
ANY new class will have to perform way better than the tried and trusted warrior to earn the chance to be accepted by the masses.
This might be a rather simplistic evaluation of how each class is percieved,but...
Warriors are THE boss tank.
Palladins are viewed as THE aoe trash tanks,and ok on light mellee bosses.
Druids are viewed as excellant OT's and again aoe trash.
DK's (imo) will fall somewhere between Palla's and druids.
This is the pre concieved "racism" that affects the classes trying to break into the classic MT role.
Right or wrong this is what you face.
Stick at it,pull off amazing heroic/10man tanking efforts and the warriors will stick poke and laugh,but possibly....just possibly..you might get a raid spot
So given Naxx bosses. Which would you think would be ideal for a DK to tank? Given equal gear to any of the other tanks. I have a new one in my guild who is a really strong player. I would like to give him his chance to shine.
Every fight in the game has been tanked by a death knight - they can do the job. bosses are tauntable so other than patchwerk there is a high margin of safety in the 2nd tank.
have him try tanking through the swarm on Anub'rekhan
"Stop trying to hit me and hit me!"
~ Morpheus
Tell your dk to spec frost
give him a shot on 25 man sapph, and if he takes more than 100k damage over your healers he is doing something wrong.
8 min 30 second fight... i MT'd and took 426k damage, healers with 200 buffed FR (one piece FR) took 405k-375k damage, dps with 300 buffed FR (two piece FR) took 350k-300k damage.
As dk tank he should know when to use his CD's especially on this fight to really shine.
**edit**
i wouldn't really judge his first attempt too much since he will most likely be learning the tricks, but if you do need a 2nd or 3rd attempt you should see a huge difference if he is a good DK tank.
Maxxena- he can save his cd's to web spray
Patchwerk- god as ot since he have alot more avoidance then other tanks and if he's unholy then boneshield will be up alot of the time
loatheb- more avoidance migh help on overall damage and if he lines his diseases up before you can heal then death strike should give him a 1.5-3k self heal.
Just let him tank whatever realy, it should not matter that much.
I was thinking of something a little earlier. We aren't stepping into the 25 mans until tonite. And while I know that they CAN tank any thing I prefer to roll with tanks best suited to the fights. I am really a little ignorant on the strenghths and weaknesses of DKs.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks