3.1 Changes to DKs

[loadtoad]

Nah, I am trying to be positive as well, and Tony is right, we do more damage as tanks. My only rebuttal to that is that we have no threat modifiers on most of our abilities, so Damage + Frost Presence is all we have. We need to do higher damage to compensate.

I guess my biggest problem with this whole mess is we all know Blizzard. When they mess up a class, it stays messed up for a very long time before they fix it. PvE Arms is a good example there. That spec went through an entire expansion as the red-headed step-child for raiding. And we need not even bring up Ret Paladins pre 3.0. They were a joke.

But still, a tank meant to tank with avoidance and magic resistance is still being dropped to a physical mitigation tanks levels in both respects. The hit to Frost Presence is kind of made back with the change to Blade Barrier, of course you won't have it active 100% of the time, due to its dependency on Blood Rune activation, but it hides a 10% avoidance cut. It's truly sad, is all I am saying.

I only quote you because of your pve arms comment. PVE arms was in fact as good a raiding spec as fury was. Utility does not = mediocrity. The changes to windfury/sword spec ruined the arms pve spec for wotlk.

[Krenian]

Nah, I am trying to be positive as well, and Tony is right, we do more damage as tanks. My only rebuttal to that is that we have no threat modifiers on most of our abilities, so Damage + Frost Presence is all we have. We need to do higher damage to compensate.

-coughRune Strikecough-

That attack should be put in with every single attack you have on you. For 20 RP, it's pretty much nothing and you can easily get half of that back by blowing your horn for 10. Honestly, RS should be easy enough to keep you up. Also, it's amusing to say that we have no modifiers however honestly, we don't need it...We hit like trucks already, may as well go with that.

[Typhus]

There are pros and cons to the nerfs, as with everything. Gamebalancing is a major part of the game, first of i was insanly furious about the changes. Being a DK myself it hurted alot.

But some of the changes i like, like BB. Before this wasnt even on my bar, now with the right build its a nobrainer. I like the DK since there is sooo many different ways to specc them and they still can tank verywell. Im not a fan of cookiecutting builds. Trying to work out for my own so to speak to see how it suits me.

Now 3.1 brings alot of changes, some i think is kind of out there. But hopefully they will be toned down abit or altered in some case. Like Sitharien im abit concerned regarding blizzards previouse trackrecord when it comes to revert changes in "future patches" And have been a warrior im used to roll with the punches... each patch So this isnt something new. But if these changes goes through and the reaction when we fully can tackle whole Ulduar and Blizzard goes "Wooops DKs are as squishy as the next clothie, oh well we will change that in a future patch" it might rob us of a tankspot in a push content patch.

Im constantly met with ppl saying "good ridence there allready is 3 tanks in the game so hopefully you will be worse then them so you wont get picked for 10 and 25 man... BTW can you tank heroics for me?" or well similar to that and i guess most DK tanks are met with this, as well as droods and ofc paladins was in 2.0...

GC said over and over again that DKs are a CD based tankclass, to make it more unique. But it seems to me they are going more and more away from that type of gameplay with altering of the CDs times.

Time will tell thou, im not giving up hope. I love the DK tank, and i love Warrior tank.

The thing i didnt like was Blade Barrier nerf, its nerf is Directly effect Bone Armour since its 10% less chance to avoid a shield token to get eaten. Sure a passive dmg reduction is OK but with the raise of CDs bone armour is going to get eaten away alot faster then before.. 10% more to be frank and im not sure the 5% static reduction is compensating for longer 20% reduction and 10% to avoid ALL melee dmg. And 10% less chance to take 30% less dmg from magic, if you are specced into that.

Now most of you say "why dont you go frost then?" Well to tell you the truth... I usualy are a frost tank. Been All 3 tanks, liked frost the most. Had hard time with threat in blood. Working on a solution to that but this isnt about me. Its about all other tanks out there who isnt frost. Some actually like being Unholy, or Blood. And since Unholy is a very solid and valid specc i think this need to be adressed.

But this is PTR and it will be PTR for well atleast 1 month i guess, so hopefully we will all get good solid testing to see how it looks like with all the new changes. To see how it effects us who are DKs.

Time will tell
/Ty

Satrina made a good post regarding cooldowns and how they can be used

[Typhus]

That attack should be put in with every single attack you have on you. For 20 RP, it's pretty much nothing and you can easily get half of that back by blowing your horn for 10. Honestly, RS should be easy enough to keep you up. Also, it's amusing to say that we have no modifiers however honestly, we don't need it...We hit like trucks already, may as well go with that.

Sure we hit like a truck, same as druids to be frank. They also tend to hit like trucks. Thou our dmg comes out as magic in most cases that truck is usualy translated to a Nuke .

Paladins will get their fix with excorsim in 3.1 so they can start being trucks too. Warriors are hopefully getting there. I wouldnt mind Dks hits get toned down in tanking, if it didnt result in a Threat loss.

The RS is a nice balance, if you blow it everytime it might result in not being able to use IF or anyother RP driven source of skill. I made a macro for it on my BS, but there are times when i think "finaly 40RP. Oh it is gone..." even thou macroing it is the only way for me to keep it in par with rotation, one less button to push is always nice. But it might have its drawbacks

[nips]

Tony i think the nerf conserns alot of dk's have is with how blood was clearly unbalanced, but all 3 talent tree's was nerfed. Satrinas health and cd threads are only on how good blood currently is for progress tanking. Personaly i wanted them to nerf the 6% health bonus in blood it would make dk's have more or less equal health as paladins/warriors in all specs. As for survival with cd's Will of the Necropolis - Spell - World of Warcraft played a major factor and is also located in the blood three. Basically blood needed a major nerf while frost and unholy did not. Sure the unholy dk lasted longer then the other tanks, but it was nothing like the blood tank.

Personally i think frost was not that strong compared to the other classes in a normal raid setup. Nerfing blood to become more like frost would be a better aproach imo. There are alot of factors to consider ofc.. how well are new dk's suited to tank heroic's now and how balanced are we on bosses that dont have large tank killing blows? And is there realy viable to tank as frost/unholy with these changes? Hopefully blizz got the time they need to balance us propperly before 3.1 hits.

[Sitharien]

-coughRune Strikecough-

That attack should be put in with every single attack you have on you. For 20 RP, it's pretty much nothing and you can easily get half of that back by blowing your horn for 10. Honestly, RS should be easy enough to keep you up. Also, it's amusing to say that we have no modifiers however honestly, we don't need it...We hit like trucks already, may as well go with that.

If you re-read my statement, I said "most". There is no reason to be contemptuous. I am aware of Rune Strike's mechanics, and it is obviously used liberally. I was referring to almost every OTHER attack we have, sir.

[Rialév]

I played around a bit with the changes on the PTR realm the other day. And coming from an Unholy DK Tank. I have to say that as much as the live players are worried about an incoming nerf. It doesn't feel like one at all.

The class in general needed a slight restructuring, and so the changes that they did make feel a lot more balanced in general. It's not so much a nerf as it is a mechanics change.

Coming from a tank's perspective of the up and coming changes. The unholy tree has really come into it's own currently with the restructuring of it's talents. Allowing us to pick up a few more talents that were unavailable before due to filler talents.

All in all they moved some of the essentials to more accessible places in the tree. And moved some of the fillers around to basically open up a broader and more viable build potential. DPS generation feels pretty much the same if not a bit more than previous days with the spell mechanics.

TPS especially on the perspective of AoE has raised a fair bit, and with the increased damage to Scourge Strike (talent) Threat is absolutely not a problem on single targets.

Changes in CD timers were pretty much a given eventually. Bone Shield was a bit too spammable in my humble opinion. Despite it being the spec's signature talent for tanking, with the correct avoidance, HP, and your given tanking stats, it's not a severe set back for anyone who has grasped the unholy tree thus far. The only direct worry i have for the up and coming patch would be the change of 10% parry to 5% passive damage reduction from Blade Barrier effecting the functionality of Bone Shield. Now, this being a very large change in mechanics for that talent in particular... Healers may have a harder time to keep up with the incoming damage. However, in many situations Bone Shield will not stay up for a very long period of time, particularly in an AoE case. Defensive CD's are a pretty good thing to use here so as always, we can revert to natural instinct of what needs to be done, rather than pull our hair out wishing that Bone Shield's timer wasn't changed.

I'm not entirely certain if they changed the CD for Icebound Fortitude. Which would be a pretty good kick in the head for us who like to spam it

If anyone here has played a Warrior in the past, they are 100% familiar with changes and reverts and more changes. So from a standpoint of what's going on here... i imagine some of us are used to it, and we'll adapt. Others may have a hard time adjusting to the changes, but as far as tanking goes, I don't think blizzard intended (despite the idea that DK's will be a Cooldown based Tanking class) to be a facerolling threat generator. I've never been a fan of button smashing to get a job done. And I think they are trying to take that aspect away from the class to some degree.

[sawzz]

Lets face it ALL tanks classes are face roll threat generators. If you have the gear keeping threat above your dpser is not even a consideration in wrath. These nerfs to DK's are clearly a way to balance game content versus the other tank classes. DK were to good at dealing with burst magic damage and this was a way to handle that, making DK's more like warriros and pallys (druid got nerfed to for the same reason). Why buffing the other classes is not an opotion is beyond me.

Im only upset at this round on changes because its like I hear the opposite argurment every two month or so. Before last patch DK's were taking to much damage and were to hard to heal. Now opposite. Unholy and frost were the only real consideration for main tanking now its like they are the worse. What gives? Can't some middle ground be found in all this? It seems that the scale is now swinging hard in the other direction. When DK's were recieving all there buffs all I heard was how much love they were getting and how great thing were. As an experience wow player I translated that to "better enjoy it while I can".

[Rialév]

Blizzard has always pulled a slight weight with the trial and error tactics of restructuring classes. At least that's my opinion. The feedback they got on the PTR realm is at least a running idea of what play experience can pan out to, but we've all seen in past patches that sometimes they have a hard time bringing a class back down to earth. Especially when they realize that the mechanics are just too powerful, as well as the synergies through their abilities, cooldowns etc.

I figured they would start restructuring the internal mechanics of DK's shortly after the launch of Wrath. Despite the effects of Beta testing and PTR, a lot of that sort of content doesn't get seen until it hits the Live realms, where there are several million more people experiencing the mechanics of any particular class.

But, it seems if one would do it mathematically, the Unholy DK Tank is still going to take less incoming damage as opposed to the other tree. But I'm not much of a mathematical player, and I'd rather go with hands on.

And I do agree with your statement that any tank can faceroll his threat if he has the gear for it. That is the easy part, the hard part is being a good tank. So at least in my eyes, with any incoming nerfs or changes to mechanics it will be a moderate to fair challenge relearning the threat modifying mechanics of the class to some extent.

[Rialév]

forgot to mention, one good thing about this incoming cange, those just enterring into the DK class will at least have a good solid experience with what is going to be different, as opposed to those who have been playing one since launch. But, we've already had a few large changes, and like I said before the good players will continue to remain good, and the others I suppose will be left behind, just as it always is.

It's about adaptation to change, and any veteran has had to deal with it before.

[nips]

The good thing is that blizz are realy trying to balance the 4 classes although it means we are seeing alot of changes. Personaly i do think all encounters are balanced around warrior tanks just like in the past because they are the most versatile tank in the game. You could argue that 3d sarth proves othervise, but tbh i think blizz wanted us to use cd's from other players and druids/dk's just broke the fight. Maybe they wanted healers to do more then just watch grid all day and using painsupression etc is more involving.

Anyways it's going to be intresting to see where we end up.

[Rialév]

-coughRune Strikecough-

That attack should be put in with every single attack you have on you. For 20 RP, it's pretty much nothing and you can easily get half of that back by blowing your horn for 10. Honestly, RS should be easy enough to keep you up. Also, it's amusing to say that we have no modifiers however honestly, we don't need it...We hit like trucks already, may as well go with that.

Meh, keybind it to a mousewheel and SCROLL SPAM! Never miss a Rune Strike I would attach it to all of my abilities, but...
a.) that's a lot of macro typing and I'm way too lazy for that.
b.) same as a.)

I find threat scaling way beyond what the DPS can handle to steal off of me, so that would be another reason to not bind it to every ability for me. Sometimes I like to use that RP for something else, maybe not as high of a priority in early stages of a fight, but a nice addition later on.

But of course, that's the here and now. Post 3.1, I'm not absolutely positive at how are threat will be changed in any significant ways... but i'm definitely not giving up the scroll mousewheel up spammage.

[Jeretis]

Not sure too but here what I'm reading there :
Scent of blood :
15% chance after dodgind / parrying or taking direct damage to get the scent of blood. This effect give 5 RP generation to the next 3 melee hit (assuming strkie or whites). Cannot occur more often than once every 10 sec.

Now what are theses 15% proc. I'm really bad when it comes to stats, but I'm pretty sure that means every 7 hits we can assume this to proc. Given the 10 sec CD and a 2 sec boss that leads to something like 4 ppm. Assuming 4 ppm this is something like 60 RP per minute.
So same result here, this may be what you've done. But this whole thing turns around the fact we are saying that it takes 7 hits to proc Sent of Blood. I can't say this is correct or this is wrong. Maybe someone can here ?

On average a little bit less, because if they miss you entirely it doesn't have a chance to proc. Scent of blood won't mesh well with frigid dreadplate

[Satorri]

There has been talk of dialing up Scent of Blood since BoSanc has been fixed, but I think that was just talk.

Scent of Blood + Butchery can give you a bit more RP to play with for sure, it's just a matter of making sure you have something worth spending it on (like CE, nomnomnom)

[nips]

Scent of Blood: Will now proc on a dodge, parry or when taking damage, and now grants 10 runic power per charge. Internal cooldown removed.

[Esch]

Scent of Blood: Will now proc on a dodge, parry or when taking damage, and now grants 10 runic power per charge. Internal cooldown removed.

Good News: We can have a sustained RP generation method that essentially feeds itself.

Bad News: High chance the RP per hit will be nerf pre-3.1 as it makes RS 'procs' effectively cost 10 RP, which is nothing. Furthermore, you have to spend 5 points into Blood where the Blade Barrier went from required to 'meh', especially compared to other tier one talents.

Personally, I think this current version is meant to get folks to try it and accept the Blade Barrier nerf, as it shifts DKs into a warrior-esque design after spending the talent points. As such, folks will try it on PTR, play with it, then the reduction on RP will return (5 per hit, I expect).

@Nips' 3/11 comment - where we're heading pretty quick is homogenization to the point of boredom. I feel Blizzard's "Bring the player, not the class." mantra has become an obsession. While this does benefit the casual 10 man group, larger 25 groups end up carrying a lot of folks who aren't offering as much to raid utility/buffs/etc. I'm not looking forward to Ulduar when the current fight logic is '50% more tanks, triple the add spawns and triple the mobs' hitpoints' compared to the 10 man version.

[taek]

But, it seems if one would do it mathematically, the Unholy DK Tank is still going to take less incoming damage as opposed to the other tree. But I'm not much of a mathematical player, and I'd rather go with hands on.

I'm entirely sure that's the case, especially considering UH has very little else apart from BS for tanking in its tree.

BS gives 20% mitigation for X time every 120 seconds.

IBF gives ~45% mitigation (to most tanks) every 60 seconds. IBF is now the best DK CD, and Frost's IBF is quite a bit longer than anyone else's.

Frost also gets 3% more avoidance and 2% more mitigation than anyone else.

I also think Acclimation is undervalued. Sure it's situational...it's situational to 3 of the 4 most difficult fights in the game: Sapp, Kel, Sartharion. Quite honestly who cares if a tanking ability is only useful to the easiest fights in Naxx.

[Satorri]

Furthermore, you have to spend 5 points into Blood where the Blade Barrier went from required to 'meh', especially compared to other tier one talents.

I disagree on Blade Barrier. While I definitely am not thrilled about losing the 10% parry, the 5% dmg reduction is far from "meh." That will be an important part of our new backbone as we rely on being more ruggedly durable.

I think you're right about Scent of Blood though, it's a bit strong, it may get a slight nerf before live. That said, it may be nice as an investment for those who want to get more RP while tanking/soloing/pvping. Currently the use of RP is a little case specific, most tanks are happy just to get RP off every time it procs, though Frost get's plenty of value from FS, and Unholy makes good use of UB. CE is good fun too, and DC is definitely a valuable tool. We'll see how it all comes out, I'm just happy to see Scent of Blood becoming more attractive. Maybe Will of the Necropolis will get its attention soon too.


As tanks we're making a slight paradigm shift, but the more I've been thinking about it, the less severe or pure-down it feels. Without looking at particular trees, the general shift seems clear:

We're losing our 15% baseline magic immunity along with 10% parry, but in exchange we're getting 10% universal immunity. The trade off is that we lose the things that were distinctly our area, as in highest avoidance and anti-magic supremacy, but we're gaining a closer durability baseline to other classes. That said, we're not as extreme in our unique abilities, but we do still stand apart.

Even without Blade Barrier's parry I still have more avoidance than the other tanking classes, and I don't socket for it. And with Magic Suppression/AMZ Unholy is a standout anti-magic tank. Frost's talents/skills put it as a standout for mitigation, with 2% more all damage immunity, and the new Unbreakable Armor. Blood's strength of course is as a major effective health tank, with the best +health buffs, and the heals.

That said, I think Frost and Unholy are probably in pretty good places, though I'd like to see Blood get a little better tools tied to survival, being more healable is not quite the same as being more durable.

[Satorri]

And taek/Rialev:

IBF is a strong CD for everyone, though it's ~35% for folks at the uncrittable cap.

Unholy:
Bone Shield has gotten a slightly higher nerf than the others with the 10% avoidance miss, though I wouldn't expect it to be more than a 2-4 second duration loss from that. On a 2 min CD I think it will be worth using slightly more tactfully, albeit frequently.
You still get 6% magic dmg reduction flat, AMS worth full immunity, and AMZ for the strategic group/self protection.

Frost:
Unbreakable Armor is a very nice tool for pure mitigation. It's duration is not dependent on avoidance, so it will increase in intensity not duration where as Bone Shield will increase in duration with a consistant intensity.
With 3% bonus miss, 2% universal immunity, Acclimation for spell concerns (which is more valuable than many would make it out to be), and the extended IBF duration, Frost does seem to be well and ahead the most durable spec if you take every survival talent.

Blood:
Vampiric Blood still has the longest duration of the tree-specific CD's if you glyph it, and +35% incoming heals is a pretty major buff, the bonus health is just nice to go with it.
Spell Deflection with the dialed up 45% reduction is nice for direct casters and volleys and chain shockers, though the chance to proc has been reduced by about 50% give or take for the tank.
The self-heals, fully improved Rune Tap, Mark of Blood, Imp Blood Pres, talented Death Strike, and maybe even Bloodworms can have a distinct value on effective health.
Will of the Necropolis is a little awkward, that said it may save your life if you take a particularly nasty or poorly timed hit.


All in all, when you enumerate details it does feel like Frost is a standout for survival, not that the other trees are short on abilities. That said you also are best served for threat going deeper into Frost than either of the other two. Clearly there's a big shift in the paradigm, so we can look forward to plenty more brainstorming.

[Rockslyde]

I knew nerfs were incoming, and i've totally expected it, and was at peace with it. (I've seen my beloved warlock class nerfed into oblivion from day 1.) I think the only real complaint i have is with Shadow of Death being removed from the game. I know it's been an extremely buggy talent since release of LK, but it was also 2% str, and sta that i didn't have to gem for. Plus when it did proc properly it was great killing some punk who was like i just roflstomp'd you, and now your dead, but wait oh shit, your not dead and gonna kill me. kek.... Shadow of Death you will be missed if by no one else, by me at least.