Death Knights can tank every possible encounter in this game so far. There has never been a problem with DK's mechanics vs. bosses or anything like that. The whole idea that DKs can't tank everything is just made up by people who haven't had a good experience with them. An example of this? Well, my officers told me that Druids are way better than me at mitigating magicial damage....But that's where we come in and prove them wrong, so future DKs can happily tank whatever they want to.
In Naxx10 we used a crittable DK to tank patchwerk, in Naxx25 a DK tanks one of the melee horsemen while I ranged tank the ranged ones because I can spell reflect.
DKs can tank. Whether you actually get to tank depends on your guild dynamics which is a completely separate thing.
I always love hearing the term MT. Someone define what a main tank is for me.
We have a team of tanks and depending on the situation or fight, one of us will be on adds or trash and another on a Boss. We are all (druid,paladin,warrior and now death knight) TANKS and we all can handle trash, adds or a boss. We adjust positions as required and dictated by the encounter not ego or some opinionated raid leader.
If you are a serious player who knows your class and HOW to tank, then you can easily shift between classes because the general concepts apply. Execution is different but outcomes will remain consistent.
/end rant
The devs have stated numerous times that Death Knights are a tanking class. With that said, death knights will get whatever adjustments they need to fulfill that role as a tank. I think it is also very clear that the devs are adjusting all tanking classes so you do not have to raid stack anymore. Look at what changes they made to Thunder Clap to allow Warriors to handle AOE. ANY tank class can deal with any encounter. It will happen as this is Blizzards agenda. There will be changes. I think this is why raiding is stalled atm. Naxx is where Blizzard is going to measure all classes and make adjustments prior to releasing more raid content. Will a class excel given certain circumstances? Of course, but will another be capable? Yes!
I pretty much always defined the maintank as the go to guy/one that has the most experience etc.Originally Posted by gorrash
Now as far as DK tanks go, the only thing I've really had problems with while tanking on heroics have been when I need to tank 4-5 guys at once, as thats where the "when all there cooldowns are unavailable they go splat" tends to come about, though at the same time I've been tanking for some subpar DPS. Though with the changes they plan to make to DKs I think that will be more a thing of the past to be honest.
I was being a bit coy there. I suppose I was trying to state that we have a Tank lead in our guild. We do not have a class lead for those who tank. We all assume the role of Main Tank at times.
I will agree with you on the cooldowns. It is a juggling act. On the other hand, I have had no issues with aoe mobs as Unholy. H-Violet Hold as Frost can get hairy as you move from portals so fast that often you are standing at one with no DnD etc. Until the new patch comes out, we are very reliant upon dps doing their job and good heals. I have "Main Tanked" Naxx and all heroics with Unholy. My healers say that I am a challenge to heal but not the worst. Blizzard is addressing the issue.
Eh, "MT" has grown to be in some ways a pretty much ceremonial position but its not as useless a term as I think some people make it out to be. It is true, however, that having a well geared stable of tanks is better than having one main and a bunch of scrubs. If a tree falls on your MTs house, you should still be able to run the raid. There are and will be fights in the future that will require multiple tanks to be well geared and well played.
But in the context of the current raid content, your MT is the one who will kite Anub, tank Faerlina, tank Maexxena, soak HS on Patches, etc, etc.
I hope I am coming at this in a non biased fashion as I am set to be the "2nd tank" for our 25 man Naxx starting Friday night. I'm fine with that because the nominal MT is a good friend and we compete/push one another in a productive manner.
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)
I'd say at this point that the biggest problem with DK tanking is uncertainty.
Blizz is definitely still feeling out how DKs are going to balance in with everyone else, including in things like PVP. Now, most of the other classes got similar balancing modifications, but that didn't affect tanks all that much; not a whole lot of people spec prot and then go PVP with it, and it's not exactly burning down the house when you do. (Yeah, I know, I like Wintergrasp too. ;p) So when modifications were made to warriors or to druids or, to some extent, pallies, they weren't modifications that significantly affected their ability to tank; in fact, all of them got good buffs to their tanking abilities for the expansion.
DKs, though, they don't have "a tank spec", so it's relatively harder for Blizz to balance them for PVP (or just plain "other content") without also affecting their tanking abilities. We're seeing a few changes in the just-released patch notes that, well, that aren't buffs. ;p
That's not saying that they've been nerfed INTO THE GROUND or anything like that. But it's possible that DKs will be forced to change their strategies and rotations because of incoming nerfs that have nothing to do with tanking, and raids are gonna wipe while the DKs adjust, because there's no substitute for learning to tank with a boss whaling on you (and we are, generally speaking, talking about inexperienced tanks here to start with.)
Or a guild can go with experienced and veteran warriors, druids, or pallies, and not much worry about DK tanking balance.
Ideally you can achieve an equitable distribution of loot such that any of your raiding tanks can hop in and tank any encounter you run into. In practice, heh, no. Inevitably some of your tanks are going to get geared before others, even if the old Main Tank paradigm is dead. There's always a risk of having those geared players become unavailable (setting you back in progression), but that's balanced with the reward of having more-durable tanks. With DKs, there's the additional risk that they'll have the gear, but some nerf or other will make the gear unsuitable for them, or that they'll just plain get thrown for a loop when one cooldown or another gets jettisoned.
Of course all that's balanced by the fact that DKs do well on gimmick fights where lots of mitigation in short bursts outperforms solid mitigation with no spikes, and gimmick fights are fun. So who knows. ;p
I dont think MT is really that useful anymore (in top end guilds anyway). We swap tanks in and out for a few bosses at a time, and we'll have different players MT/OT a given fight. All our tanks are awesome: reliable, geared, making the right efforts, knowing how to play their class etc etc. There were in game structures im the past that forced people to use particular tank classes for particular fights. Those structures no longer exist, but it will take the community some time to catch up. Hence the tankism atm.
However, if you just rolled a dk tank, dont expect to bust right into a tanking role until you've proved yourself to be reliable, knowledgeable etc etc, if you already have established tanks in your guild. Talk to your GM about what the guild needs.
Most of the changes going forward with DK tankwise were buffs. Losing some runestrike damage for increased threat is helpful. The changes to IBF and BoneShield are the only real "nerfs" however with the changes to our tanking presence we'll gain more baseline mitigation and have to be less reliant on these two cooldowns. You might see more DKs switch from Unholy spec to something else because of the changes but for the most part the blood tree is more interesting and the frost tree is pretty much unchanged.
As far as the rotations are concerned the blood tree now has some new "toys" to play with. Most guilds I feel will go with their experienced tanks and work a DK in there when they can until everyone can kind of get a feel for how a DK fits in.
Right, I'm not saying that this patch makes DKs unsuitable for tanking or anything like that. But they're definitely symptomatic of the problem, where a problem with DKs not related to tanking (PVP, especially) necessitates changes in the core DK tanking mechanics (here, reducing the active damage reduction effects).
It's good that Blizz is keeping a close eye on the changes it's making, in order to prevent true "nerfing"; the changes on the one hand are balanced by changes on the other hand that Blizz hopes leave the DK in more or less the same position as before. This is a reason for optimism. (There's also an argument that encourages DKs to go tank, because if there's a significant tank population in the class, Blizz has to keep up the tanking ability even if it makes other balancing options difficult...)
I haven't played my DK beyond the starting quest line, but it's definitely going to happen sooner or later. ;p
most of the time its not about the class rather its about the player.
Im sure DKs can tank, but would they MT for our guild? prolly not.
we have 1 DK specced unholy to tank..one blood to DPS.
but I'm the "MT" because Ive been tanking for the guild for over an year and a half...so in an year..you could become the MT for your guild and everyone will trust you and will gear you up...this goes for any new tank on the block regardless of class.
You just say that cuz you know I read these forums and hope you get to tank something tonight!
uh oh guild drama! haha
The biggest problem at the moment as I see it isn't the tanking ability of Death Knights, but where they supposed to fit into current raid content. Most established guilds will already have two tanks (in our case paladin and warrior), and for some reason Blizzard in their great wisdom made all of the tier 1 raid content require two tanks at the most.
Are any of you taking more than two tanks to Naxx, and if so, why?
its not that DKs are just bad tanks in general, its that there are not enough good DK tanks to show people how it is played. When pallys first be tanks, you can bet they were horrible. A pally that said they were a tank would have a hard time finding groups, and it went like this until someone or a group of people figured everything out about how to play tankadins.
They simply have different mechanics than the other tanks. Warriors were seen as the all purpose tanks. Pallys were AoE, Druids had (and still have) massive HP pools as well as armor. DKs have tons of anti-magic abilites.
In short, give DKs time. For some, its thier first time tanking, and they have 4 years of knowledge to catch up on in the case of warriors, 2 with pallys and druids
"Ive always wondered what we warriors say to make people attack harder, be healthier, or taunt mobs" -Orla
It is not just because dk's are a new class but most DKs are also new to tanking and it takes a lot of trust and confidence from people to be asked to main tank in a 25 man raid, In addition, DK's can do very good dps while speced as tank while the other tanks have fairly poor dps when specced for tanking (in particuliar prot warriors and prot paladins), so asking the DK to tank will put a severe hamper on raid dps and is kind of wastefull and in a way its just plain stupid, Untill you have a raid without prot paladin or prot warrior or untill they fix Prot Paladin and Prot warrior "not tanking anything" dps...Expect to always be DPS especially on progression encounters.
Last edited by TheJeremy; 12-11-2008 at 10:49 PM.
Yes we actually take 4 tanks into nax, its just because we have 4 tanks really, there is not a particuliar reason....3 tanks is very helpfull in a lot of areas of 25 man nax, our forth tank is usually dps in cat form...We have two prot warriors and a prot paladin. Additionally we have a frost DK that can dish out a lot of damage as dps but he does have good tanking gear, the only time we use him to tank stuff is for 4horseman range tank.
Places where we find 3 tanks to our advantage: Noth, Patwerk, Gluth (paladin tank for kiting), Speed trash pulls, Gothink, 4 horseman, kel'thuzad (almost required because of mind control RNG), Anub'Rekan, Farelina.
Thats about 1/3 of the encounters where it is helpfull to have 3 tanks...
Granted we have done a few of those with only 2 tanks but 3 tanks can help a lot.
Last edited by TheJeremy; 12-11-2008 at 11:00 PM.
this is a good point , but ill say this I have played WOW for 4 years since US beta and always played warrior and have always Tanked too , ive tanked pretty much all content bar sunwell due to leaving the game , i was my guilds MT in everything .
I am now playing a DK and i would like to try MTing on him simple reason comparsion i know how to tank , i do miss my warrior and will probably bring him up to speed soon enough but for the moment ill Tank on the DK . i do agree with the point said earlier that most MTs in a guild are tried and tested warrior/pally/druids and that most of them will not roll a DK i don't think that is correct though as i know 3 MTs on my server all playing DK's and tanking quite well , again i suppose it is all a matter of what you want to do , i do agree with the ICT someone posted earlier though and i think you will see allot of them dropping off when they realize that tanking is harder then they though it was
I do the second, third(sometimes my co-mt does it), and fourth, my co-mt the first. It doesn't really matter, and it's more fun to have several people do the "difficult" tasks.kite Anub, tank Faerlina, tank Maexxena, soak HS on Patches,
And yeah, I'm a tank that rerolled a DK, so I didn't have much trouble to grab my spot. Granted, some people still seem pretty clueless about what DKs can do (one officer tried telling me that I was somehow worse for Maexxna's stun...huh? But then he didn't know what Boneshield was, either). There's some "discrimination" but it mostly is born out of ignorance and generic incompetence. Generally, DKs are perfectly suited for MTs.
If it's true that DK's are extremely good when they're wearing very high ilvl gear, then there's a strong scaling issue, because at lower levels of gear they really are squishier than an equivalent protection warrior or paladin. Their AE rotations are much more complex than a warrior or paladin, and not only are most of their cooldowns on the GCD, but they require runes that you're already burning just doing your normal rotation. So, the cooldown you want may not be available exactly when you need it (what paladin or warrior hasn't died at least a few times because they had to wait a few tenths of a second for the next GCD?), plus you'll need the cooldowns more often, and have to budget them between preemptive and reactive use.
It's not that DK's can't tank, it's that (at least at lower ilvls) the class mechanics are much less forgiving of mistakes. If someone is tanking for the very first time in their WoW career and using a DK to do it, that's a very tough road.
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