Comprehensive Guide to Death Knight Tanking

[Gothmogg]

Well that blows goats :-(. I was hoping that Cata would bring my interest level back up, but if all they are going to do is homogonize all the classes even further, then whats the point....bleah stupid Blizz, take a good game and dumb it down so far that your original fan base doesn't want to play it ...brilliant. Sorry....Rant off ;-)

[Mend]

Well that blows goats :-(. I was hoping that Cata would bring my interest level back up, but if all they are going to do is homogonize all the classes even further, then whats the point....bleah stupid Blizz, take a good game and dumb it down so far that your original fan base doesn't want to play it ...brilliant. Sorry....Rant off ;-)

Well there are some great benefits to the change, like finally being able to get your tank talents together just as other tanks can do, Example:

There are 3 base talents that every tank has, 6% Magic reduction, +% Stamina modifier, Improved bearform,Dstance,RF, Frost presence

If you take a quick look at the specs currently you will find each of these in a different tree which I think gives death knights a small disadvantage compared to the other tanks.

[Satorri]

It is a shame for the folks who liked Frost or Unholy as a tanking style, but the new Blood devoted tanking tree feels fantastic. It really feels like a focused tanking tree chock-a-block full of tanking talents and effects.

Here's a short list of what to expect at initial swap:
1.) We now have a huge collection of fun toys! Vamp Blood remains, IBF can be talented to 60% reduction and zero cost, DRW is now a tanking CD for threat *and* survival giving a spike of parry chance (currently 20%), Blood Parasites (Bloodworms redesigned) is godly with little buggers splash healing anyone close enough for 10% of their max health (and gaining smart positioning and self-healing to let them work better in hazardous environments), DKs now have the revamped AP reduction which is now a 10% all damage reduction (keyed to BB through a talent), and we have Bone Shield which has not yet been redesigned (3 bones at base, 20% dmg rdx, 2% dmg buff 5 min duration, 1 min CD). Spell Deflection is now very easy to grab in good conscience by the time you're 85 without feeling like you're missing something.

2.) The new rune system is going to be an adjustment. At first it will just feel like you're not getting your runes back as quickly as you're used to. The silver lining is that in the final balance you will get more bang for your buck when you use moves, which rewards patience and timing, rather than GCD spam. To go with that we get RS as an instant strike (no longer on-next-swing) which is still currently a bazooka, and you will be using with high priority unless it gets balanced down. The new talent Runic Empowerment allows your RS a good chance to refresh runes, which will also help fill the void. There is still a possibility of blackouts, which I am hoping will get tidied up a bit, but it is not nearly as rough as I was expecting at first inspection.

3.) Runic Power is now awesome and something we really care about as tanks! On top of RS (which will supplant DC as a tank unless you are really trying to get the ranged value), we have DRW which has retained its 60 RP cost but become a delicious tanking CD with 20% parry and the threat/damage bonus, on a 1 min CD. 60 RP is still a hefty cost, and that could be as demanding if not more so than the 1 min CD with frequent use of RS. What does that mean? Scent of Blood is now a fantastic value, with no redesign needed!! As a side note, you can probably expect the RP generation on AMS to go away from the base spell, as talent wording suggest it might only be added through Magic Suppression in Unholy.

4.) Life Shield is wonderful. Imp DS got a little buff pushing the heal to 17.5% of your total health, and once you get 51 pts in Blood your 3rd mastery will be causing those DS heals to give you a bubble of equal size. That's right. 1 DS will heal you for 17.5% of your health and apply a bubble equal to 17.5% of your max health (even if the heal overheals). The bubble does not stack, but it is still plenty big enough to laugh while leveling in 80 tank gear at how stuff can't seem to hit you.

5.) Not a big deal, but as expected with the tree designations, presences have been swapped around. Blood Pres is now the tanking presence, Frost is a % damage increase with an RP bonus, and Unholy has a haste bonus and increases rune regeneration.


More will come, including a new guide to DK tanking, but that will have its own thread. =)

[Mend]

Its kinda embarrassing to bring this up at this time of the expansion but I can't seem to find a reasonable discussion thread on the net about the block mechanic that isn't on the AMAZING official forums.

Since the beginning of the expansion most people have thought DK's to be the "Squishy" tank for the lack of a block mechanic even though it's not that great on bosses, while the other tanks including druids have some form to absorb/block damage through savage defense.

My discussion is, does the lack of this mechanic hurt DK's in any way as progression tanks, or even on trash ? and does the reactive healing mechanic from Death Strike make up for the loss of a block mechanic ?

[KnThrak]

We do not truly lack Block as Blood, however the order is different.
A Druid crits his target, procs Savage Defense on himself, and absorbs a little bit of the next blow.
A DK gets hit for damage, then uses Death Strike or Rune Tap to heal some or all of the damage back up.

Compared to Paladins and Warriors, yes, we do take more damage in 5mans. A "quality" shared with Druids, due to lack of a "proper" shield (which can reduce damage from each attacking enemy independantly). However it should not be a problem in 5mans, and in raidcontent it balanced out either way.

I would argue that depending on what you're taking the DK's selfhealing is much more powerful than Savage Defense at least since it's so controllable. It's frustrating to die before you get to selfheal but that means you could have done better. Not the RNG crit-based shield-proc.

[eremiel]

i want wo ask if y can explain about tanking/dps weapons and speccs.
i am asking cause i was thinking on tanking as blood with dual wielding talent and 2xhanded tanking weapons!what are the benefits and what are the disadvandages?i keep asking ppl ''why they tank with 2handed dps weapon'' and i keep getting the answer ''cause they all do like that''.

[Satorri]

Since the beginning of the expansion most people have thought DK's to be the "Squishy" tank for the lack of a block mechanic even though it's not that great on bosses, while the other tanks including druids have some form to absorb/block damage through savage defense.

My discussion is, does the lack of this mechanic hurt DK's in any way as progression tanks, or even on trash ? and does the reactive healing mechanic from Death Strike make up for the loss of a block mechanic ?

It is all in the balance. If you flip a couple pages back in the theory forum, I had a post called Evolution of Survival, something like that. In the grand breakdown DKs get roughly the same total damage reduction if you factor block/Savage defense for the other classes. The self-healing is in the equation for Blood tanks. We take more damage, but we heal to counter some of that. On a rough estimate (hard to compare for all the other vairables) I would say the assumption in the balance is that you do not get a high effectiveness out of your healing, so if you are very good at using DS and Rune Tap as active tools, and have a good sense of timing to get good efficiency, you can probably tip the balance a bit in your favor. This is somewhat anecdotal, but fueled by a couple years of watching parses as I swapped between specs on the same content.

We do not truly lack Block as Blood, however the order is different.
A Druid crits his target, procs Savage Defense on himself, and absorbs a little bit of the next blow.
A DK gets hit for damage, then uses Death Strike or Rune Tap to heal some or all of the damage back up.

I get where you're coming from, but they're very different things. We have no block, or block-esque mechanic, but we don't need it, we are balanced for performance without it.

Compared to Paladins and Warriors, yes, we do take more damage in 5mans. A "quality" shared with Druids, due to lack of a "proper" shield (which can reduce damage from each attacking enemy independantly). However it should not be a problem in 5mans, and in raidcontent it balanced out either way.

The paradox of Shield Blocks being a static value instead of a percentage is that if the value is balanced high enough to seem significant against a hard-hitting boss, it can make you nearly damage immune in 5-mans with softer hitting trash. And if you are balanced not to full-block things in 5-mans, you look at bosses and question the value of blocking 1500 damage on a 20k hit. That's why Clysm will have a %-based block. Yay math!

I would argue that depending on what you're taking the DK's selfhealing is much more powerful than Savage Defense at least since it's so controllable. It's frustrating to die before you get to selfheal but that means you could have done better. Not the RNG crit-based shield-proc.

Like I said above, it all depends on how well you time your heals. I agree, if you are good at using them, the total effect can skew very nicely in your favor. I *believe* that the balance allows Blood tanks to not have the best timing and still hang out on the level.

i am asking cause i was thinking on tanking as blood with dual wielding talent and 2xhanded tanking weapons!what are the benefits and what are the disadvandages?i keep asking ppl ''why they tank with 2handed dps weapon'' and i keep getting the answer ''cause they all do like that''.

This has been answered several times before, including in the original section of this thread.

The summary, though, is that Blood relies on "instant weapon damage." This will only use your main-hand weapon if you dual wield without Threat of Thassarian in deep Frost. You can expect to lose about 35-36% damage on HS, DS, RS, and PS even if you are using equivalent level weapons going from a 2-hander to dual wielding with a slow weapon in your main hand (even more of a loss if the weapon is fast). You will not make up for that with the added melee damage from auto-attacking, and the slight increase in possible RS usage.

This is not to say you can't, but you will sacrifice plenty and gain little in return.

[Bosk]

How does the loss of DG as a 2nd 'taunt' feel in practice? Is it back to the good ol' days of H-Shattered Halls making sure you give every mob in a pack some TLC?

[Satorri]

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Where do you think Death Grip is going?

[Bosk]

I understood DG could now only be used at range, which takes away its 'Mocking Blow' utility.

Coming from a warrior I was used to having a proper taunt, then a fixate as backup for situations like "Oh my taunt missed on saurfang, I'll fixate till I can taunt again".

[Satorri]

Death Grip hasn't changed at all, that I've seen.

[KnThrak]

Like I said above, it all depends on how well you time your heals. I agree, if you are good at using them, the total effect can skew very nicely in your favor. I *believe* that the balance allows Blood tanks to not have the best timing and still hang out on the level.

That'd true, on that note I wonder whether the shield-effect on selfhealing in Cata stems only from overhealed healing, so as to remove the timing-component of our selfhealing (which would make me sad ;_. Or if it is from all healing, effectively giving us a self-healing/savagedefense hybrid mechanism of sorts.

You're right that ofc Block is a very unique mechanic compared to either Druid or DK mechanics to reduce incoming damage, however it has been my experience that from a healer PoV there is not much difference in perceived incoming damage between a Warrior, a Druid and a good-at-timing Blood DK. Paladins seem slightly different, I attribute this mostly to their near-autoblock system.

[Bosk]

Death Grip hasn't changed at all, that I've seen.

Ah I was worrying about wowhead listing the spell as 8-30 yards range (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=49576) and thought they'd reintroduced it, as they'd toyed with doing this a patch or so ago.

[Satorri]

That'd true, on that note I wonder whether the shield-effect on selfhealing in Cata stems only from overhealed healing, so as to remove the timing-component of our selfhealing (which would make me sad ;_. Or if it is from all healing, effectively giving us a self-healing/savagedefense hybrid mechanism of sorts.

The current implementation (though it was absent last build as they started swapping talents over to the new parent system), was the bubble was based on the total heal, not just effective or over-heal. It is a rough parity to Savage Defense, though it is more controllable, for better and for worse, and will be balanced accordingly in scale, I am sure.

[KnThrak]

Very awesome, that means timing it well is still an ice bonus.

[Swam]

yeah I have been won over by the new blood tree. I was going to drop my dk for my warrior in cata but the new blood tree just feels really well done.

[Michultradk]

Hey guys, I have been working on my tanking gear and this is what I have now.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...cn=Michultradk

When you look at my spec, I still swap out the one trinket for the Essence of Gossamar for 1110 added health when I'm running ICC and other hp demanding places. Though to date, I have only got the Black Heart to drop once and some one else ninjad it and left group real fast, so I'm still working on that drop. We have another guildy that needs it worse than me so if he's with me during the run and it drops I will give it to him most likely.

I do have a minor question though. Lately I have been talking to my healers before starting 5 man heroic runs and if they agree I have been using my DPS gear to tank with and adding a nice amount of DPS to our group. Is this ok, or am I really just taking chances on wiping the group and possibly making people resent my decision. In my DPS gear buffed I have about 32-34k hp, though I have no defense mitigation or avoidance in this gear, it seems to work fairly well.
Now that I have a formidable amount of health, should I look at more balanced gems, or should I stay with stacking gems for health.

This blog has helped tremendously and I look forward to your CC blog, which I'm sure will be full of stuff to read, I did find a thread where you and several others are discussing the Beta testing and it sounds great.

Thanks again guys.

Mich

[Kazeyonoma]

You should probably make a thread in the HALP! forum if you're looking for personalized advice, especially with an Armory Link Michul.

[Khornn]

Ah I was worrying about wowhead listing the spell as 8-30 yards range (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=49576) and thought they'd reintroduced it, as they'd toyed with doing this a patch or so ago.

Just logged in to test this and indeed Death Grip has been changed to have a minimum range of 8 yards, but it still is a taunt even though the wording resembles Mocking Blow ie. the target does not switch back after 3 seconds.

[Satorri]

8 yrds is melee range, incidentally. I have recently used Death Grip at pointblank range as a backup taunt, successfully.