Death Knight Changes Coming (Posted 12/02)

[Shadowwolf]

[blizzard author=Ghostcrawler link=http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13129078969&sid=1]We’ve had a lot of questions about death knights recently. This is a new class, and while we’re thrilled overall with how it's been received, we always expected to have to make more changes to death knights than the classes that have had their talents under the microscope for many years.

We’re not prepared to announce specific changes to DKs yet, but here are some general areas we are tinkering with. Most of these changes apply predominantly to tanking death knights, so I avoided cross-posting this thread, but there are probably items of interest to dps specs as well.

1) Death knights seem to tank well when they have cooldowns available and take too much damage otherwise. The change here seems obvious â€" boost Frost presence’s mitigation while reducing the mitigation of some other abilities, especially Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield.

2) One idea we have for Icebound Fortitude is to scale the mitigation based on defense skill. This lets the ability be less of a paladin bubble in PvP for dps knights, while still letting it act more like Shield Wall for tanks. It also has the side effect of making defense slightly more attractive to death knights. (Let me add before it’s asked that yes we understand Ferals have this problem too and we are working on it.)

3) Unholy is a very popular tanking spec, largely on the strength of Bone Shield. Expect to see some buffs to tanking talents in the Blood tree especially.

4) Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. We will probably chill its weapon damage and increase its threat.

5) We don’t like the behavior where DKs feel like they are supposed to drop Death and Decay to generate runic power before a pull. It just looks goofy. We will probably lower the runic power costs of Unholy Blight and Horn of Winter, which seem to be the primary reasons to generate RP. Horn of Winter will probably be something like no cost, 30 sec cooldown, generates 10 rp.

EDIT: I am refering to using DnD outside of combat just for the runic power (kind of like Bloodrage for warriors). It's totally legit and intended to use it to start a fight to gain threat and hurt the bad guys.

6) There are some odd situations caused by Shadow of Death that we would like to fix. The talent isn’t designed to let you escape durability damage or rez by zoning into an instance.

7) There are some annoying parts of the non-pet ghoul. We want to lower the aggro range (for less accidental pulls) and spawn the ghoul in quicker when dismounting. The ghoul, at least Unholy’s version, could also use some AE avoidance like other pets.

We are probably going to add a new spell to let you raise fallen allies so that you don't have to make the decision between bringing back another player (which was just supposed to be a fun bonus) and bringing back your ghoul, which can be pretty crticial for some specs.

This isn't everything we're talking about of course, just a little preview. [/blizzard]

[blizzard author=Ghostcrawler link=http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13129078969&sid=1&pageNo=16#309]


Q u o t e:
    Man, I was really hoping that general forums would be better and we'd see the maturity that was (generally at least) shown on the beta forums, but I suppose I was wrong.
    GC, I'd like to propose heavier moderation - a lot of these posts are useless to everyone, especially other players.


I agree. This is not an appropriate place for mindless QQ or Blizzard conspiracy theories. If you think there will be a problem with some of the changes we're discussing, by all means bring them up. That is why we are mentioning them now. But please make sure your post is of some interest to other players or developers. Spare us the venting.

We've been a little gentle with the moderation so far because these role forums are a new experiment for all of us. I tend to delete junk and ban people who post it, but really you probably don't want me having to spend time doing that.

Now back to the actual issue...

There are some DK sigils missing from the game. At least one of these is tanking oriented. We plan on getting them back in soon (like the same patch with these other changes).

We are aware that DKs may be struggling more to get defense. They lack tanking weapons, shields and guns, all of which can provide defense to warriors. It's something we're working on.

We're also working on Blood AE.

We would change the Horn of Winter glyph (to something like duration).

I would not expect full itemization for two-handed tanking weapons. We wanted DKs to tank with dps two-handers (and have their mitigation benefit somewhat from the dps stats). We might add a craftable weapon or something down the road, but only if that felt like an option for the DK, not a mandatory piece of gear. You can also dual-wield tanking weapons if you want, but again, it isn't the intent that is the only way to play. (Please don't turn the rest of this thread into a discussion of whether or not DKs should be able to dual-wield.)

Rune Strike is a tanking ability. It was designed to let DKs make up for the fact that their threat suffers so much from hits that fail to land. It does suffer from a confusing tooltip (which we have since fixed) but it is the DK who must avoid the attack to get Rune Strike to light up.

We still like DKs as the "active abilities" tank. We just think it might be a little too extreme right now. Icebound Fortitude was intended to be something you use when a big, predictable damage spike is coming, but DK tanks seem to want to keep them up 100% of the time for fear that they will die without them.

We don't have a PvP role forum (though there is a PvP forum) for the specific reason that we wanted the ability to discuss PvP and PvE issues at once. I realize not every player is interested in PvP -- that's cool, not every player is interested in paladin tank mechanics either. But it is totally appropriate to discuss PvP issues in all 3 role forums. Obviously we don't want PvP (or PvE) discussions to dominate. PvP is a part of the game and we do make balance changes for PvP reasons. Obviously we don't want PvP (or PvE) balance to dominate. Please do not use the rest of this thread to refute any of those claims (though starting others is fine if you really feel the need).
[/blizzard]

[Arcdelad]

I have yet to meet a DK tank...I know air tanks, but really...other than air, who is tanking with their dk? I see tons of DPS dk's out there right now....

[Shadowwolf]

I actually ran a normal instance on the trip to 80 with a DK tank, was strange but it happened and with little problems too. They are rare though, but then again tanks in other classes aside from Pallys are rare also. Theres tons of feral druids but outside the guild, 90% of them refuse to tank for whatever reason.

[Arcdelad]

1) feral druids are inherently lazy....and tanking is hard work sometimes....
2) you used to look at a piece of leather gear and know instantly if it was a caster leather, dps cat/rogue leather, or bear leather - now there is a MUCH more subtle and less defined line between what is dps gear and what is bear gear...unless you understand through and through what stats DO and which to stack, OR you have a list to spoon feed it to you, most druids just make everything DPS and say screw tanking...becuase
3) feral druids are inherently lazy...

i cant wait for air to gear up and tank things...im looking forward to it =)

[JohnnieRat]

Determining tank gear for druids is hard? It has armor...check. It has stam... check. Ooh dodge... an added bonus!

WTS an easier class to know what stats for tanking you need.

[Arcdelad]

lol...okay...take this quiz (no cheating):

Identify the tank gear:

1. [item]Ravenous Leggings of the Furbolg[/item] vs [item]Legguards of Swarming Attacks[/item]
2. [item]Sprinting Shoulderpads[/item] vs [item]Spaulders of the Careless Thief[/item]
3. [item]Jorach's Crocolisk Skin Belt[/item] vs [item]Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt[/item]

[Haderach]

the stuff with more expertise on it?

[capnpop]

1st
1st
2nd

[Air]

The stuff with more stamina, expertise on it and the blue socket's?

Getting uncrittable is insanely stupid right now for me.  Be atleast a week before i can tank a heroic.  I need to finish questing in icecrown for revered.  And to get honored with Sons of Hodir.  And than get revered with wyrmrest.  And finally get a trinket from Halls of Lightning.  With that I might hit 540 def, or 539....

[Arcdelad]

correct answers are 1st, 2nd, 2nd....so...cap was almost correct hehehe...see...its NOT that easy...you cant just look at leather, see expertise, and say "cat gear" becuase BOTH cats and bears need expertise....bears get MUCH more bang for the buck form expertise vs hit, so expertise is generally a better stat, BUT its NOT as good as STA, ARMOR, or AGI...

so...yeah...its not easy to pick bear gear anymore...you have to balance out a bunch of stats and sift through items that can easily be used for DPS as well....

i feel your pain air...i see a LOT of tanks that are having a hard time getting DEF capped accross the board, whether they be warriors or pallies...druids have it easy...we are DEF capped naked with talents =)

[un4]

... Also because anything seeing Arc naked wants to die.

[Tyban]

Yea thanks alot Arc....now  I have an image of you naked tanking...oh wait, someone must of shaved you...that's much better 

[JohnnieRat]

You only supported my point Arc. In all of the choices you gave, you can choose the "wrong" choice and, as a bear, will still be perfectly fine. Simply by existing, they support bear tank stats (stam, expertise, dodge [agil or straight stat]. Even DPS gear makes you viable as a bear tank. Now... [item]Bolstered Legplates[/item] vs. [item]Legplates of Bloody Reprisal[/item]. Both easily accessable (Heroic VH and Exalted Wyrmrest respectively); one is a DPS set and the other tank... a tank cannot substitute the DPS version and get away with it like a druid, even though the DPS ones have butt loads of stam.

But this is a DK forum anyways. And yea, it seems silly difficult to itemize for DK tanking. There's also so much literature on it then other classes that they do seem weak right now. No one has perfected the art yet.

[Trismus]

I am levelling my DK to tank... so far I like it although I do agree, the mitigation is a bit lax.


However, with four abilities that create AoE aggro at level 60 as well as mean dps I have been enjoying myself immensely. I also feel that blood *should* be the secondary tanking tree simply due to its design, and I hope they follow through: using dps regen to tank would give DKs a fantastic niche (especially if the regen was AoE based) and allow for some extremely fun times.

All in all I like the class, mainly because I despise CC-style instance running (I find it tedious and tiresome). AoE is very much my preferred style, and warriors are lacking in AE tanking abilities, which is one of the primary reasons I never fully enjoyed tanking on Trismus; I do feel that I will love DK tanking, however.

Frost is also so powerful in PvP as to be almost cruel 


-Tris

[un4]

My DK is blood (level 68) and tanks just fine.