DK QQ -- 3.2 and beyond

[Zivh]

As a fairly well geared DK Tank, I just need to QQ a little bit on here about our recent nerfs.

We don't get a shield. -- Duh, right?

We previously had higher avoid/hp/armor to compensate for this fact.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I lost well over 3000 hp, over 5000 armor in the last 2 months (~3000 last nerf, ~2000 this nerf), and about 2-3% avoidance overall.

I don't find any of my stats to be superior to ANY other tanking classes. Warriors and pallys have more Armor from their shields, PLUS block. Druids have more avoidance and HP. What do we get now? A couple of cooldowns? Our best one of which they nerfed and doubled the time on?

WTF? Are we now meatballs instead of meat shields?

Is anyone else afraid this may be the end of the OP DK Tanking? Should I reroll my hunter and go back to mindless arrow barrages? Switch to full DPS instead of tanking? Or, are these buffs to DW'ing supposed to be the answer? I remember while DW Unholy spec with stacked dodge, my avoidance was something in the realm of 54%, but threat was awful.

What is the solution here for us?

[Ghladum]

In time, you'll learn that not being invincible is normal and nothing to freak out about. Sorry for the snarky reply.

DKs are still excellent. I would most likely kill to have your threat/DPS and AoE manageability while maintaining pretty good parity with all the other tanks in terms of survivability.

[TomHuxley]

Is anyone else afraid this may be the end of the OP DK Tanking? ... What is the solution here for us?

Um...to NOT be overpowered? Welcome to the club. Work done here by Sartorri and others shows that DK survivability is not noticeably behind the shield tanks. You can only think so if you have not bothered with the actual data behind what a shield gives you (answer: not much) and block does for shield tanks to instead skip to the righteous indignation part of QQing.

You may have to stack some more survival stats now and worry about stacking stamina for progression encounters... once again, welcome brother.

[Zivh]

QQ I liked being OP

[Hades]

I won't really have a chance to check out the damage ERRR! - balancing done until this weekend since my connection at work isn't reliable enough to tank. Is it really that bad?

(Edited because "Until this weekend" only needed to happen once in that sentence.)

[Zivh]

I tanked CC Heroic (new 5-man) today and I felt like I was getting low an awful lot more often. My healer wasn't one I typically roll with, but he wasn't poorly geared.

I guess the real test will be in Uld25 this week.

[Odwome]

I felt the same on the new heroic, and it's probably just because people aren't familiar with it.

If you wouldn't mind, could you post your stats in full raid buffs? Just so we could get a meaningful comparison.

I don't know exactly right now, but earlier during a 25man, my stats were as follows:

~28k Armor
~45k Health
~56% Combined Avoidance
13.4% Block with about 1600-1650 block value (adding up to an average mitigation of ~1k damage off of all attacks, counting 25% Shield Block uptime)

And I'm in all 226 other than my shoulders, helm, and one trinket.

[NexsusTheFrostDeathKnight]

games should be challenging no? :P
the only thing tha ever gave me paue for concern was the cooldowns given an extra minute, and even then they're still easily spread out throughout the instance and will always be there for a boss fight.
I would like to see the tree tank cooldowns looked at, personally I don't like bone shields affect, and vamp blood was only cool because it used to be up half the time, now it's up a quater of the time :/.
unbreakable armor seems weak, but provides dps.
they need working imo.

[Maelstrom]

Is anyone else afraid this may be the end of the OP DK Tanking? Should I reroll my hunter and go back to mindless arrow barrages?

If you needed to be OP to be a good tank, then you are bad.

Is this thread a troll? Seriously, get lost with the whole "QQ I'm not OP anymore" stuff, grow a pair and play the game properly like the rest of us. I suppose it should've been obvious when you rolled a brand new class that there would be violent changes to it over the initial course of its lifetime, anyone expecting anything other than that is deluded.

Satorri and others have done the math over and over, and DK mitigation is fine now. Welcome to playing the game how its intended.

[lyd]

as a DW frostie, i'll probably be switching out some of my expertise for stamina to address the hp gap (i am way over soft cap). The armor loss was unfortunate, but I have faith that if things get too ugly for DK's, blizzard will fix the problem.

[ghromorth]

It was a huge nerf in stamina, we have the same dodge and parry than pallies or warrior but we dont have block which... well it seems we are a little bit unbalanced... and now we have almost 6k less hp than everyother tank (pallies have 46k, druids idk , warrs 43k, dks em 38k...) hopefully blizz will make our fp 10% of stamina like pallies... you know DK: 3%(veteran)+6%(frost presence)=9%+sta - Pallies:10%(selfbuff)+6%(talent)=16%+sta its a little bit unbalanced don't you think? ibf nerf isnt that important to be honest, the real deal is the lack of stamina and avoidance now. Iwant to see a pally trying to tank w/o 7k heath... or their ridicculous automatic aggro gen.... or maybe the fact that they can go to the bathroom while tanking... stop mixing the PvP overpowerness of the dk with their tanking role we were a little bit overpower with the ibf thats right but the cooldown solved that its just retarded to nerf everything at the same time instead of nerfing step by step.

note: Seems nobody cares about the pally not beign able to die with their new talent

[Tonylicious]

It was a huge nerf in stamina, we have the same dodge and parry than pallies or warrior but we dont have block which... well it seems we are a little bit unbalanced... and now we have almost 6k less hp than everyother tank (pallies have 46k, druids idk , warrs 43k, dks em 38k...) hopefully blizz will make our fp 10% of stamina like pallies... you know DK: 3%(veteran)+6%(frost presence)=9%+sta - Pallies:10%(selfbuff)+6%(talent)=16%+sta its a little bit unbalanced don't you think? ibf nerf isnt that important to be honest, the real deal is the lack of stamina and avoidance now. Iwant to see a pally trying to tank w/o 7k heath... or their ridicculous automatic aggro gen.... or maybe the fact that they can go to the bathroom while tanking... stop mixing the PvP overpowerness of the dk with their tanking role we were a little bit overpower with the ibf thats right but the cooldown solved that its just retarded to nerf everything at the same time instead of nerfing step by step.

note: Seems nobody cares about the pally not beign able to die with their new talent

Your information is sorely lacking, and largely incorrect. At a minimum DKs have the same stam modifier and base HP as a warrior, Blood DKs have 3% higher stam modifier. Pallies start out with 1500-2k lower base HP (I could be mistaken) with a 14% talented stam modifier so they scaled past warriors in this tier, but not by huge amounts.

Pretty sure everyone knows and cares about the recent Pally buffs.

[Satorri]

Indeed, Ghromoth, I posted this in your HALP! thread, but no DK tank lost 6k health from the patch. I'm fairly certain you can count on one hand DKs who could lose more than I did, and that was closer to 3k.


I told my protadin OT (who has been our #3) that he is going to be MT'ing everything now. We had a good laugh about it. Friggin' free Guardian Spirit talent. >.<

[Beetlegeuse]

I didn't feel the DK nerf that bad.

40.1k hp @ 3.1
38.5k hp @ 3.2 (after epic gems)

It was not a huge nerf in Stamina. I still have more hp then the pally and war tanks in my guild. Nerf... yes. Huge... no. According to the parse after Beasts, my avoidance and mitigation numbers look almost identical. For all the doom and gloom about the DK nerfs, I didn't really notice an amazing amount of change.

On another note, Did scent of blood get changed? I felt like I had an infinite supply of runic power last night. Comparing parses pre/post 3.1, I had a higher percentage of Death Coils then before, which confirms my anecdotal evidence. I don't have a prior Beasts parse to compare against, but I will check after Ulduar tonight.

[Satorri]

We can just think of this thread as our group therapy for our cross-the-board cuts to our passive survival abilities.

We'll group hug it out, then let this post sink to the bottom of the ocean where it will be forgotten! =)

[Diablo4372]

But But But i like this thread it keeps me sane thinking Woot now that were not so OP anymore maybe some of the terribad DKs that think they can tank will quit again like they did after the last nerf and will let the good tanks shine even more.

Good players learn to Roll with the nerfs. Bad players learn to Reroll.

This comming from a Lock/Deathknight Ive seen and been hit by more nerf bats then any class yet im still here.

[TomHuxley]

QQ I liked being OP

Lol, hey, I can sympathize with some honest sadness. Everyone enjoys being OP when they have it

FWIW, I also was a lot spikier in my health on the new heroic with an Uld10 geared healer (although he's more used to raid healing than 5-mans I think). Blizz can say what they want, but the new heroic is certainly harder-hitting than other heroics, although improved DPS mobility and CC makes it smoother.

[jaydee]

I'm more concerned with healers and raid leaders getting used to the new stats and CD timers. With IBF now on a 2-minute CD, I'm now going to try and split my trinket usage instead of using them both at the same time like before, to provide more cover. So:

AMS = 2x 5 sec (7 sec glyphed)
Trinket 1 = 2x 10 sec
Trinket 2 = 2x 10 sec
IBF = 18 sec

Not including Unbreakable Armor, we still cover ~50% of 2 mins with our cool downs. No more solo tanking Vezax anymore, we'll have to use external CDs now

[Saent]

I'm not exactly sure how everyone else is measuring up, but regarding the original post...not much changed for me this patch. I'm mainly in full ulduar10 gear for tanking, with a few lucky 226s in there from hardmodes and a random 25Man pug.

The combined dodge and parry changes modified my buffed and unbuffed avoidance totals somewhere around 1/2 of 1%.

My HP took a slight hit, around 1500 unbuffed, around 2K buffed.

Surprisingly, my AC barely seems to have changed at all this time around, maybe 300 total swing fully raid buffed.

This is using the exact same gear and spec tanking last night as I did Monday night....Talented is the coolest mod =)

[TomHuxley]

No more solo tanking Vezax anymore, we'll have to use external CDs now

And I think this is a very good thing (although I understand that it will require an adjustment from raids used to getting to skip this in the past) and why I think either CD times or boss encounters had to chance, and CDs were the easier answer.