Death Knights ill-suited to MT?

[Ceravantes]

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.

That isn't what he said at all.

He is saying, and rightfully so in most cases, that many warrior tanks have been doing this for years (as well as ferals and tankadins to a lesser extent). How many Deathknights out there can you honestly say have tanking experience prior to being a Deathknight? Not nearly as many as there are, that's for sure. So then, you have people playing a brand new class, who are in need of some retuning already due to mitigation issues, who also have 0 previous tanking experience (which is far more important than anyone really lets on) and people expect to just become a mt.

I am afraid it doesn't work like that, a guilds MT is essentially the most important role in any raid. Look at it like this, there are less tanks involved in each raid, for example the number of dps and heals needed for larger raids increases exponentially, while the number of tanks generally increasing by 1, but still being possible to do with the same number. Secondly, if you look at attendance numbers over time In most cases tanks will have the highest overall percentage, as an example, in my pre and post bc guild, who raided 4 or 5 nights a week based on current progression, over 2 years of raiding, I had a 99% attendance percentage (didn't go into decimals, or I am sure it would have been higher). A MT is someone who is not only geared, is not chosen based on class, and while skill is the among the most relevant factors dependability is far and away the most important.

Spend some time raiding, show them how dependable youa re, how good of a tank and player you are (or can become) and then bring your arguments to them.

[nips]

That isn't what he said at all.

He is saying, and rightfully so in most cases, that many warrior tanks have been doing this for years (as well as ferals and tankadins to a lesser extent). How many Deathknights out there can you honestly say have tanking experience prior to being a Deathknight? Not nearly as many as there are, that's for sure. So then, you have people playing a brand new class, who are in need of some retuning already due to mitigation issues, who also have 0 previous tanking experience (which is far more important than anyone really lets on) and people expect to just become a mt.

I am afraid it doesn't work like that, a guilds MT is essentially the most important role in any raid. Look at it like this, there are less tanks involved in each raid, for example the number of dps and heals needed for larger raids increases exponentially, while the number of tanks generally increasing by 1, but still being possible to do with the same number. Secondly, if you look at attendance numbers over time In most cases tanks will have the highest overall percentage, as an example, in my pre and post bc guild, who raided 4 or 5 nights a week based on current progression, over 2 years of raiding, I had a 99% attendance percentage (didn't go into decimals, or I am sure it would have been higher). A MT is someone who is not only geared, is not chosen based on class, and while skill is the among the most relevant factors dependability is far and away the most important.

Spend some time raiding, show them how dependable youa re, how good of a tank and player you are (or can become) and then bring your arguments to them.

Well you can say that , but lets be honest here. How many guilds dates back to MC raiding? And how many of them have the same warriors MT'ing stuff? It's a low percentage.

I did get his point and i know that tanks usually have a harder time getting the spot they want. But its realy a derailment of the thread that was a question about whether or not dk's can mt. Making this long posts and arguments on how the warriors that have been tanking for several years yadayadayada... Its not the point of the tread.

Warriors did the same thing when paladins started to enter raids as tanks. Its realy not a class issue it's a guild relations issue you guys are talking about.

And as far aas experience goes i have met people that have tanked alot longer then me that was bad tanks an i have met new tanks that did as good or a better job then me. Clutching on to the "i have tanked mc card" dont realy tell all that about you as a tank. As long as you are willing to learn.. Then tanking can be picked up quite fast.

That said im not trying to diminnish the effort alot of tanks put into helping the raid. If you help out alot you should get rewarded in some way and every serious guild does that. So dont push the panic button just becaus dk's want to mt

[Morthengel]

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

Blizzard said over and over that all tanks will be able to MT without any considerable difference, but only with some different flavor. If not already, they will be made to very soon (see the upcoming DK changes.)

Now for people minded like you, I think Blizzard should make classic wow servers and all of you guys play there and stop ruining other open minded players' experience.

You can raid MC/BWL/AQ/Old Naxx/ZG/Ony all day with only and only warriors tanking, and there are no spriests, no DK's, no dps warriors, no ret pallies, no boomkins, no horde pallies and no ally shammies, etc, etc... in raids.

[Ehsopsphere]

i can easily feel that the death knights armor sucks which will be fixed in the next patch. As of now pallys and warriors r better tanks and id personally want a pally just for bos. Once the classes are balanced as possible you have to see that warriors have been maintanking wow for three years so people will be set in their old ways and not research the tanking changes.

[Kedearian]

DK can main tank just fine. Right now my guild is 14/15 naxx, and thats cause our dps isn't where it needs to be. The tanks and healers have carried us to this point. I'm a unholy DK Tank, and we have a frost dk offtank at the moment. Previously we had a warrior MT and a Paladin MT for a while, both of which took anywhere from 10-30% more damage on the same fights as i did. Every healer we run with commented about how much easier DK's are to heal. If you gear properly tho, any of the tanking classes work just fine. Some are easier (warriors/paladins) to gear than others (dk). But a week of heroics and some craftables and anyone can get where they need to be.


Kedearian

[Blueduck3285]

I agree with a few posts in this thread, many people lost sight of what the thread was actually about. Its not about comparing of classes and its not about the arguement of the MT role/term. "Are DK's Ill-suited to MT?". True be told, yes (as of late, for the general population of DK's), but with the up coming patch the "spiky"ness should be getting addressed.

DK's can taunt, DK's can aoe, DK's can hurt stuff, DK's can take hits. Simply we are tanks (and yes I know we can dps too), and as such are designed to do the jobs requested of tanks. With a decent health pool, good avoidance stats, and def of 540+... DK's can/will MT. The thing that holds DK's back (IMO) is our guilds and peers.

Wether we like it or not, all DK's are our peers (even the crapy ones). Just like all other classes, one person can ruin the flavor of said class for anyone else. This is where the true Ill-suited (in my mind) is coming from. Can the "spiky"ness be handled accordingly? Yes! Are DK's currently MT'ing? Yes!

For those that are having trouble with guilds and such, hopefully with time and a few tweaks from blizz, they will come around just as they did with pallies and druids. Things just simply take time.

[Petninja]

Speaking against DKs, they're getting some pretty big changes in the upcoming patch which leads me to believe they might not be as good ATM.

Speaking for the DKs, I know it didn't take me years of experience tanking to figure out how to tank with my warrior. I'll bet it doesn't take that long to figure it out for a DK.

[Blueduck3285]

Speaking against DKs, they're getting some pretty big changes in the upcoming patch which leads me to believe they might not be as good ATM.

Speaking for the DKs, I know it didn't take me years of experience tanking to figure out how to tank with my warrior. I'll bet it doesn't take that long to figure it out for a DK.

The hardest part about running a DK is managing your resources. The same system used to create your threat, is also what protects you, and even pops your "Oh snap"'s. When I am tanking, im usually running through runes fairly swiftly. At any point I can have Frost runes on CD and need to use Unbreakable armor. Hopefully I havent used blood tap yet for some other "Oh snap" situation that could have developed. I think the rune/runic power is one of the most interesting systems in place. For me thats actually the joy of DK tanking, is that I might actually have to think. Been playing a mage and hunter so long that I am used to 3-4 buttons max and keeping up or even topping the damage charts.

With this brings challanges as well. Not everyone is cut out for a multi... whats the word Im looking for? anyway, with two different "energy" systems creates some complexities. You have your runes, which most of your front end spells/strikes use, as well as some defensive moves, and you have runic power which the rest of your spells/strikes use, and without glyphs, even a defensive ability or two. For some, this can seem hectic. For others its a breeze. Basically my suggestion is to spend some time testing your abilities and try to develope your own understanding and then move on to finding rotations and such so that using a rotation seems more natural.

Biggest help for me has be Tankspot.com

[Kedearian]

in short.

Can Dk's MT? yes.

Are they better than everyone else? sort of.
my experience so far shows this to be true.
AoE tanking - Paladins still have it easy, concecrate and faceroll to hold threat
hard hitting boss - anyone can really take these now, equally geared and skilled i think a druid has a better time of it.
Fast hitting bosses - Warriors and paladins seem to do the best due to having block
Magic bosses (ie last boss of nax) - DK have this hands down, with AMS AMZ and a flat 5-10%(spec) and soon to be 15-20% damage reduction they take the least ammount of damage from magic bosses.

All tanks can do any fight now, but some are better than others in some places.

[Kairken]

All in all there is not a DK in the World of Warcraft who has played his class for even two months yet (save for beta testers). If tank officers are going to rule out DK's before even letting blizz shake the bugs out of the class im afraid we may miss out on a nice add to a raid group.

[Lightmgl]

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.

It really is a scaling issue. Part of the reason DKs struggle initially is the defense rating difficulty. Once they get beyond that and start putting on epics and stamina trinkets they take off beyond the other tanks. Basically they go from worst avoidance and worst hps to having the highest avoidance and equal hps.

I do not think a DK nerf is the proper solution either cause it'll screw up the lower level DKs. They simply need some system to fix how they scale or it will continue to grow out of control. One suggestion I had made was to make their parry ability raidwide but that would be unfair to druids. I dunno what else they could do without completely reworking the class.

Our endgame DK tanks stuff that other classes aren't capable of handling nearly as well. I understand the individual advantages but really their endgame avoidance is just way too high just as the druid's is way too low. None of it matters yet except maybe Sartharion +3 or Enraged Faerlina but it will matter come the next raid zone.

I really like the concept of equal tanks. The problem is it is not equal right now. Warrior aoe threat is still garbage (though at least managable), druids avoidance is too low, DK's avoidance is too high. Paladins are also pretty skewed at the moment since theres so many undead bosses.

[xKhellendrosx]

Our endgame DK tanks stuff that other classes aren't capable of handling nearly as well. I understand the individual advantages but really their endgame avoidance is just way too high just as the druid's is way too low. None of it matters yet except maybe Sartharion +3 or Enraged Faerlina but it will matter come the next raid zone.

I really like the concept of equal tanks. The problem is it is not equal right now. Warrior aoe threat is still garbage (though at least managable), druids avoidance is too low, DK's avoidance is too high. Paladins are also pretty skewed at the moment since theres so many undead bosses.

I have to agree with the DK's being able to do some things that probably are not as easy for other tanks. For example I remember the comments my raiding guild had on vent when we hit up Anub'rekhan last night with me as MT on my DK. They asked if I knew the kiting strategy and I said yes, but then I also let them know I could basically just stand still with Ice Bound Fortitude (-probably wont be able to after its changed) during locust swarm and make the fight a complete tank and spank.

[Njordus]

I have to agree with the DK's being able to do some things that probably are not as easy for other tanks. For example I remember the comments my raiding guild had on vent when we hit up Anub'rekhan last night with me as MT on my DK. They asked if I knew the kiting strategy and I said yes, but then I also let them know I could basically just stand still with Ice Bound Fortitude (-probably wont be able to after its changed) during locust swarm and make the fight a complete tank and spank.

Durr AMS > IBF.

To the OP:
Anything with predictable, periodic damage bursts and/or other rough times are very suited to a DK. Maexxna, Farlina, Loatheb, Anub, Gothik, are all pretty well suited for DK tanking.

To the OP :If your guild uses an MT and OT approach to your roster, you are not playing to the fullest potential of your raid.

[xKhellendrosx]

Durr AMS > IBF.

To the OP:
Anything with predictable, periodic damage bursts and/or other rough times are very suited to a DK. Maexxna, Farlina, Loatheb, Anub, Gothik, are all pretty well suited for DK tanking.

To the OP :If your guild uses an MT and OT approach to your roster, you are not playing to the fullest potential of your raid.

Didn't even think about using AMS, thanks for pointing that out

Though with its shorter duration, (glyph will eventually be getting nerfed to 2 seconds I believe) I'm not sure if I'd use it over IBF's (kind of moot point considering IBF is getting nerfed as well) longer duration though they could both be popped together I suppose.

[Lightmgl]

I have to agree with the DK's being able to do some things that probably are not as easy for other tanks. For example I remember the comments my raiding guild had on vent when we hit up Anub'rekhan last night with me as MT on my DK. They asked if I knew the kiting strategy and I said yes, but then I also let them know I could basically just stand still with Ice Bound Fortitude (-probably wont be able to after its changed) during locust swarm and make the fight a complete tank and spank.

Yeah theres the cooldowns too. I try not to even look at that though because I feel in full 25 man gear the class is overpowered even without them. Maybe I'm the only one who sees it. I remember what happened to tanking when avoidance crawled up past 65% which DKs aren't far from. Blizzard even felt it was so bad that they had to slap a 25% avoidance penalty on the final raid zone. They're just putting themselves in the same situation if a class is already hitting 63% in the first tier of raid gear.

It just sucks that the class struggles so much at the start and ends up so powerful at the end. I'm a big fan of the equal across the board idealogy but its not just happening at all levels of gear.

To any guild that has not had a DK MT. Get him geared up in full 25 man stuff and above 29k hps unbuffed. You will see the monster that he becomes. Like I said its not enough to matter now because it is all so easy at that point but in the future having a DK tank could shave off healers or decrease risk by allowing more on raid healing vs the other tanks. When you're looking at non active ability differences approaching 30% less damage taken it approaches the point of not being worth having another class as a tank. The druids are even worse off too seeing as me and the Paladin take even less damage then they do so the DK over them is gargantuan.

[Inaara]

DK's can MT just fine. I've been MTing since I hit the defense cap, first while DWing, now with a two hander. I use my cooldowns proactively instead of reactively so it smooths out the damage.

[Kelstet]

To the OP :If your guild uses an MT and OT approach to your roster, you are not playing to the fullest potential of your raid.

I'm not really so sure of that statement, the ideal behind MT's is more a statement of experience, of ability, a tribute to a person that has taken the time to research and divest of themselves into being the best they can be. It's something that simply goes beyond the class they play and becomes more about the person they have proven themselves to be time and again. I don't see a MT/OT based guild as hurting "the fullest potential of your raid" in any way shape or form. Alot of MT's have divested ALOT of time to earn that right and quite honestly feel more than a slight misgiving to the 'new kid on the block'. I for one stand behind having a established and tested player filling a MT role, I know that healers are a bit more comfortable with the known moreso than the unknown.

Call me old school, call me a purist. I just don't personally feel a class should walk in and assume they are destined to be the MT. All I say to these new DK's, prove yourself, don't try to push your class so hard on people. All the pushing does is make people want to shy away from it, being a 'non-traditional' tank (a paladin) I had more than my fair share of earning my spot, and I still think it odd that both MT's for the guild I am were Prot Paladins but meh, I digress. Keep at it, keep reading/learning and keep proving yourself to be a solid investment for a guild and your time will come.

Just my two cents.

Kel

[Crunchbite]

I think especially with the 3.0.8 changes, DK's are "supposed" to be more suited for magic tanking without resist gear. I'm in a 10-man guild group on my DK frost tank with a prot Warrior. Honestly, we can be interchangeable on most fights in Naxx. But if I focus on magic fights and he focuses on heavy physical fights, it works out a lot better for the healers. DK's also seem to be quicker on AoE tanking in general, so for fights like Sarth/Anub'rekhan/etc. where there's multiple adds to OT it seems to make more sense to put me in that role. Even on some physical fights like Grand Widow it's still easier for me to MT since I can use Death Grip on the adds being off-tanked to pull them in and burn down to dispel the enrage. (there's no mind control in 10-man to work with)

[Kyi]

I MT on my Unholy DK and have no issues whatso ever I quickly showed my guild that its not an issue you just need to show them once and everything will work out after that

[Duriensbane]

I have said this on a few different posts around the fourm and i still stand by it, i have yet to see a serious tanking DK on my server. A few of my guilds DKs are rerolled high end dps. One of them the Class officer was a former rogue. Hes still getting use to the whole idea of a boss hitting him and not having evasion. But it is also a state of mind as another on this post has said. Wraping yourself up into the whole mindset of tanking is the honestly only real way to become a good tank.

I once explained how the whole avoidance + mititgation with DR thing works to a rogue and he kinda sat there silent for a long while, and replied with "I didnt think there was that much to it, heck i usually just stand there and spam 333323332" Not quite sure what macros he was using but it shows that converting from a dps only class into a plate wearing tank class is a major swing from your norm.

A solid state of mind and well-geared tank, regardless of class, will do fine on any boss. Im not gonna bust the "new kid" about anything, i personally feel like i should make one myself, or atleast test it out, so that i can help other DK's with their troubles.