Block, how much of a difference does it make? And the state of the Death knight

[Xzanthos]

First of all, pardon my ignorance, I've played a DPS class for most of my WoW career and never really cared or paid attention to who tanked.

I've recently dusted off my DK (Only PvP'd on him prior) and geared him up to tank. I've been getting groups for VoA and I've noticed that I'm always offtank to Paladins and Warriors even though they'll have 4-6k less hit points than me.

I mentioned this to a friend of mine who is in a raiding guild, he told me that Death Knights are the worst of the tanks at the moment, how true is this? Should I accept my role as offtank, which I'm fine with, but I'd prefer to be MT :P

[Aggathon]

It kind of depends on the fight and what you are tanking. Things that hit fast and for not as much, wars/pallies are typically better. For things that hit harder DKs/Druids are better. DKs were OP as hell in 3.1 and they were pretty much just beaten up with the nerf bat in 3.2, so DK tanks have been seen less frequently but they are by no means terrible tanks.

I'll let someone that knows way more about DKs than I do give more in depth explanations though.

Edit: oh and block doesn't really matter THAT much.

[Satorri]

DK's as the worst tanks couldn't be farther from the truth.

Besides that, I'd be more inclined to compare the gear of each tank in each pairing. Health isn't everything. If they have 4k less health but 4k more armor and 5% more avoidance, I'd still likely have them tanking the pug. It's not as simple as bigger health wins.

Class skills can make a difference depending on the fight, but if you're not pushing progression (or what would be progression for the gear of your group) it's not going to be much of anything noticeable.

I suspect the reason you were set as OT is because the people making the decisions think DK's are somehow inferior. Your only hope for working around that is to either get the opportunity to demonstrate differently, or get them to actually come to a site like TS and learn better from reading.

[lyd]

dk's aren't the worst tanks right now. Paladins used to have some very significant advantages but they've been pared down in the last couple patches. there are no discrepancies between any of the tanking classes that would prevent any equally and appropriately geared tank from competently tanking any of the fights out there. the *only* exception i can think of is add tanking on anub.

[Synapse]

Blocking scales inversely with the volume of individual damage intake. This means that the more damage each attack does, the less valuable the block becomes in comparison.
This means that, for raid tanking, blocking is not an advantage that puts them ahead in anything except the Anub Adds gimmick. My gear is sort of a t9-t8 frankenstein, and I have 2100 block value with my libram buff up(it's always up!), which means that, against a hit of, for example, 18k+10K per second(algalon10), i'll be thinning it down to 16k+8k, which is 11%DR on the main attack and 20%DR on the secondary attack. Against, say, the 25man version of him, the hits are 27k and 15k, dropping to 25k and 13k and making the dr actually be of 7% and 13%...

Secondly, currently most of the bigger annoyances are beyond block's capability of being helpful(Impales can't be blocked, or avoided, and nor can magic damage).


Block gets TOO powerful on small stuff, but against a raid boss it's not something that pulls warriors and paladins ahead.

[keebz]

So let's say you had a Blood DK tank and a Prot Warrior, with the Warrior having better gear and EH than the DK (not too much, but a noticeable amount). Would it be better to have the better-geared (higher health pool + EH in general) warrior on Anub'arak and the DK on the adds? This would mean the DK would take, maybe slightly, more damage on the adds than the warrior (let's say the warrior has about 3-4k more health fully buffed than the DK), but the warrior would be able to take the larger hits from Anub.

I may be placed in a situation like this where I need to decide either to take Anub myself or the adds, and initially I was thinking adds because I can probably hold aoe aggro better and the warrior's greater health pool (~49k vs 45k) would make him the better choice for Anub. This is related to the question of the original poster and may help anyone else viewing this thread, as well as myself.

[Satorri]

From your description, Keebz, I'd still put the Warrior on the adds. Block is a heavy value there, and if the warrior sets up an "unhittable" rig, they'll be a far better tank for the adds.

Likewise, a Blood DK is not a bad match for tanking Anub, so long as you use your CDs well. It may sound weird (since it buffs your health total) but Vamp Blood is actually rather nice in phase 3 as it makes you easier to keep up without adding too much to Anub's healing ticks from you. It can be hard to time well, but if you have DBM, it's entirely possible for a DK to AMS the damage of the Frost Slash away, roughly every other one.

[keebz]

Cool, thanks a bunch. Looks like if it comes down to me switching to tank, I'll get Anub'arak. I like the idea of a warrior on the adds as they can interrupt + stun, whereas I can only interrupt (not that big of an issue compared to the block they have). I was just concerned if having 3-4k less health than the warrior would make him the better choice, but it shouldn't matter too much provided, like you said, cooldowns are used in an appropriate manner.