Pali vs Death Knight "Tanking"

[TeK23]

So I got my pali and love her! She's just a sick tank and my shamans can't pull aggro even if they wanted. "As long as RF is up ;) "

But with DK's being out. I wanted to know if anyone here has played both Pali and DK tank v3+ before and what your thoughts are.

I've invested alot of time and gold into my Pali but if a DK is a better tank then I will roll that way. I 5 box (1) Tank (4) Ele DPS mainly run 5 mans and PvP @ times.

What are your thoughts.

Please no therocraft, I've read tons of it on other sites. :) I'm looking for personal experience please.

Thanks!

[Mosg2]

I've tanked with a Paladin and a Warrior pre and post-3.0 and right now my Death Knight is 75 and pure tank spec/geared.

I can tell you that The Paladin and DK are in a whole other world as far as tanking goes compared to the Warrior as far as multiboxing is concerned. A lot of people keep pushing Paladins mostly because you can make a castsequence for tanking, which allows you to focus on your heals/dps, but honestly rotating with the DK is not that difficult. As long as you don't mess with any of the Death Rune abilities, you basically put up Icy Touch and Plague Strike to get your dots going and then Pestilence to spread those dots to all mobs within 15 yards. Then you Death and Decay for added AoE--That's your first rotation and uses all your runes. Then you can just Scourge Strike and Blood Strike for single target threat/damage and use Pestilence every 10 seconds to keep resetting the dot timers on all the mobs. Use your runic power for Unholy Blight and Rune Strike and you're set. You really only need about 3-4 buttons to tank as a DK just fine.

That all having been said, I chose the DK and I'd do it again over any other tank. The raw damage that a DK tank does is ridiculous, especially on 3+ mob pulls. Please don't forget that DK means you get another 12% damage from all of your Shaman due to the talent Ebon Plaguebringer. With Mana Spring stacking I have zero mana issues, so to me the DK brings far superior buffs. You gain run speed but lose mount speed.

All in all I'm more satisfied with my DK than any other single toon since I started playing this game on launch day.

[Coltimar]

I have had a four year love affair with paladins. When they were 'the hybrid who did nothing well', when blizz kept ping ponging our role, and when 1.9 ruined ret the first time, I hung on. 2.0 and everyone had reason to love pallys. 3.0 and most people switched over to ret for the pwnage. But I am having more fun with my DK than I ever thought I could. This is the class that I wanted when I read the beta notes on pallys. We'll see how long the honeymoon lasts but, for now, DKs have my attention.

[Kulzor]

mosg2 - how the heck did you get your DK to 75 already? Questing, grinding, instancing?

My five-pack is only 72.5 right now, I'd love to find a way to level faster.

[phineas01]

Post your spec?

I'm debating on giving my DK a try at tanking and replace my pally for the team in my sig. That's one thing I never thought about was the fact that a DK can put out some damage and I could really use that since I'm only boxing four characters and one is just a healer.

[Aradar]

I'll play devil's advocate here. EVERYONE says the DK is OP so my concern would be investing the time in a class that I'm pretty comfortable with saying has an incoming nerf bat and probably a large one. You have to remember this is a brand new class and regardless of Blizzard's testing and the beta, the real information occurs when the general public starts playing with the new changes. On the other hand, I'm comfortable with saying not much is going to change with the pally other than possibly some damage buffs due to the nerfs to ret and maybe a taunt. As with everything in this game though, time will tell.

[Hachoo]

Actually the cries about DK being OP are still few and far between against the cries that pallies are STILL op even after the nerf...i think the paladin is more likely to get more nerfs before a DK.

Honestly if a DK gets any nerfs it will probably be in PvP, not tanking. If anything our tanking would most likely get buffed some.

[algol]

DKs were OP in beta. Yay. So were mages, who now are just really squishy (other than the occasional toy like when you could get half a dozen ice lance crits off on a single nova). Most of what's left is thanks to players being unfamiliar with how to shut them down yet, and what goes beyond that will be tweaked. Post-expansion patches tend to be numerous.

[Drizzit]

K, now i don't think DK are that much OP now... I hit the new land now, with like 90% of the Blues for DK, and there is a difference in mobs (not as much as original and BC). But i don't know how they will be when i start replacing my gear with quest stuff from the new area... Is it me or do most of the plate out there have +spell and +haste there. Which are both no good for DK (there spells are based off of AP, from what i heard).

[Mosg2]

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Gorefiend&n=Chernabog

That's the armory link for my DK. With Frost Presence on she's at 19.4k health and 18.5k armor, roughly.

I used my Shaman team to follow along behind her from 58 to 70 doing Outlands stuff. Nobody was able to gank me because of the muscle, and I breezed through the content. Each Outland level took me about 3-3.5 hours on average.

Once I hit Northrend I just did all of Borean Tundra and Howling Fjords. I mean all of it. Every single quest in each zone. Yeah, I averaged about 8-9 hours per level, but I hit 64 doing both those zones with one or two Utgarde Keep runs thrown in. At this point, I can clear to the first boss in Utgarde and then reset the instance in exactly 12 minutes, which nets me about 45k xp. That comes out to about ~7 hour levels. I plan on doing all of 75-76 there and then starting back up with questing.

On the off-topic nerf related theme:

DK is the first class Blizz designed from the ground up with this new philosophy of each tree doing everything (ie tanking, dps etc) while just having a different flavor. This allows for a lot of flexibility. I would say that DK's are about average as far as class balance goes--There's nothing they can do that makes you go "FFS, wtf just happened?" When Strangulate got nerfed from a ~15 second cooldown to a 2 minute cooldown and AMS went from a ~30 second cooldown to a 2 minute cooldown, most DK's said "Sounds fair." Right now I think they're in a good place. Powerful, lots of potential, but nothing broken like Wings+Bubble.

All that having been said, I don't think that DK's are going to get nerfed. They are still in line for some small tanking buffs as far as mitigation goes due to the lack of shield block.

Huzzah!

[TeK23]

Bladed Armor: 5/5
Increase your attack power by 5 for every 180 armor value you have.

That's the skill you are talking about and it's a blood talent.

[TeK23]

Mosg2,

Why did you choose to go with Unholy vs. Frost? Most of the sites I've read about tanking all go with Frost.

[Hachoo]

Unholy is the AoE tanking tree which is pretty much required for a multiboxer. Frost would be best for single target tanking.

[TeK23]

cool thanks for the info. I love pets and wanted to presonally go with Unholy for the pet factor :)

[Hachoo]

No problem. Unholy gives you a few great abilities (ESPECIALLY if you're using shamans/mages for DPS). First you get reduced cooldown on death and decay which does a LOT of aoe damage and generates a ton of threat. Second, you get the 51 pt talent unholy blight which also does a lot of damage AoE and generates a ton of threat. Combine that with increased pestilence damage (AoE as well), increased blood boil damage (AoE), and things like anti-magic zone and you have the perfect AoE/multiboxer tank. The ghoul pet is just a side bonus :)

Last, ebon plague being spread to all mobs means they all take 12% more magic damage (gogo chain lightning!)

[Drizzit]

Also isn't frost more of a raid tanking spec and unholy is a normal/heroic instance tank? Yes, i know it is an aoe tank.

[phineas01]

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Gorefiend&n=Chernabog

That's the armory link for my DK. With Frost Presence on she's at 19.4k health and 18.5k armor, roughly.

I used my Shaman team to follow along behind her from 58 to 70 doing Outlands stuff. Nobody was able to gank me because of the muscle, and I breezed through the content. Each Outland level took me about 3-3.5 hours on average.

Once I hit Northrend I just did all of Borean Tundra and Howling Fjords. I mean all of it. Every single quest in each zone. Yeah, I averaged about 8-9 hours per level, but I hit 64 doing both those zones with one or two Utgarde Keep runs thrown in. At this point, I can clear to the first boss in Utgarde and then reset the instance in exactly 12 minutes, which nets me about 45k xp. That comes out to about ~7 hour levels. I plan on doing all of 75-76 there and then starting back up with questing.

On the off-topic nerf related theme:

DK is the first class Blizz designed from the ground up with this new philosophy of each tree doing everything (ie tanking, dps etc) while just having a different flavor. This allows for a lot of flexibility. I would say that DK's are about average as far as class balance goes--There's nothing they can do that makes you go "FFS, wtf just happened?" When Strangulate got nerfed from a ~15 second cooldown to a 2 minute cooldown and AMS went from a ~30 second cooldown to a 2 minute cooldown, most DK's said "Sounds fair." Right now I think they're in a good place. Powerful, lots of potential, but nothing broken like Wings+Bubble.

All that having been said, I don't think that DK's are going to get nerfed. They are still in line for some small tanking buffs as far as mitigation goes due to the lack of shield block.

Huzzah!Wanted to ask why you didn't take Magic suppression and Anti-Magic Zone. One of the problems I'm running into with my pally in ramparts is the casters and with a DK I think I won't have to worry about that so much especially having Magic Suppression and maybe even Anti-Magic zone just in case.

[Redbeard]

I am currently running 3 ret pallies in my 5 man but you guys are making me considering dropping one for death knight, oy.

TOooooo many choices.

I know they have horn of winter and they can produce a windfury effect, do they do anything else (besides, apparently, kill stuff uber fast) to benefit melee?

Man, I need to stop reading these forums you guys are evil =)

[Mosg2]

AMZ and 100% AMS is the bomb diggity, but so far I haven't had a single fight where I went "Man, I would've had that if I'd have had AMZ." I prefer to snag some of the DPS talents.

[Multibocks]

Does AMZ require a target ring for casting?

[algol]

Does AMZ require a target ring for casting?Range = 0 yards (self)
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=51052

If you look at Blizzard for example, you'll note that field shows the max range of the targeting circle. AMZ is not targeted.

[blbjtb]

What is AMZ and AMS?

and ya im dumb ROFL I got it lol

Anti magic shield and zone gotcha

[Ualaa]

I would tend to say, threat is now mostly from damage dealt, and the DK is the highest dps of the tanks, so in a single target fight they're the best tank.

Against multiple opponents, the paladin has the best AoE damage, not specifically because of Consecrate which may or may not compare with Death & Decay, Thundershock, Swipe etc, but because of Holy Shield which causes a high amount of Holy Damage (threat) whenever the paladin blocks, which is very often. So, on the six adds who came with the main target, the paladin has exceptional threat via their basic tanking manuevers, and the same ability to pick up an add via their AoE move.

Paladin would be my top vote for a boxer, because of their ease of play. The fewer things you need to click to be effective, the more useful the respective tank is for a boxer who already has a lot of things to click. A paladin can be extremely effective with a "/castrandom Holy Shield, Consecrate, Hammer of the Righteous" macro. With a cast random, if an ability is on cooldown, the macro will not try to use it, so one button mashed and tied to your other toons main dps move results in effective tanking. True, you may need to adjust your positioning to avoid an AoE or break line of sight or move so a mob is not behind you, but that is true for all of the other tanks as well. The paladin has an aoe taunt, which is cast at a friendly and then taunts up to 3 mobs from them to the paladin, adding to their AoE supremacy. Pally buffs are very nice as well, and Hand of Protection is effectively a taunt vs taunt immune mobs, as an immune target does not interest mobs that much.

I'm not saying a DK won't work, just that any of the tank options will be fine for both single target pulls and AoE pulls... but the Paladin is an easier tank to multi-box then the others and is probably the best option for multiple pulls.

[Mosg2]

I understand where you're comeing from Ualaa, but I would still choose DK over Paladin for a pure tanking role and here's why:

1. DK's have more AE damage. Unholy will put two damage dots on one mob, spread them to every mob then drop Death and Decay and Unholy Blight. In my experience so far the damage is almost that of a Mage's AE'ing. This directly translates into threat.

2. Ebon Plague. This to me is the number one reason to pick the DK over the Paladin. 13% more damage for your group across the board is the best buff that a tank can bring to your 4 Shaman.

3. You have a 30 yard range taunt that pulls them to you, an 8 second cooldown melee taunt, and you can macro your ghoul to leap at the target and stun for 3 seconds. Not better than a Paladin, but comparable.

My tanking rotation looks like this: I pull a mob with E (Ranged disease), then put my second disease on the target (F), then spread those disease to all the other target (R). Then I put up Death and Decay (Shift+R). My DPS button is the spacebar which does a castsequence on my Shaman and it automatically does the +threat strike and Unholy Blight for my DK. You're talking about basically four buttons to make my DK tank work. Shift+Space heals my DK and Control+Space heals my group. With this setup I can focus very easily on tanking.

I'm not saying it's as simple as spamming one castrandom macro, but you get tangible gains for putting in just a little more effort.

[TeK23]

There is a few draw backs by not having a pali:

1. No Blessing of Kings 10% Status
2. No Devotion Aura with +6% Heal (Huge with (4) Healing totems)
3. No +3% Crt to Judged Targets, so no extra 3% Crt bonus to bosses :(

=======
So is loosing this really worth a DK?

[Hor]

There is a few draw backs by not having a pali:

1. No Blessing of Kings 10% Status
2. No Devotion Aura with +6% Heal (Huge with (4) Healing totems)
3. No +3% Crt to Judged Targets, so no extra 3% Crt bonus to bosses :(

=======
So is loosing this really worth a DK?
In a word, yes.
1. I haven't specced into Kings since the patch, and won't be on my Paladin. There's not really a need, I keep Sanc on myself, and Wisdom on the casters. I can live without the blessings entirely however, I mean Mana Spring Totem DOES stack now.
2. Loss of Devotion Aura, eh I don't really notice it. I HAVE however noticed less overheals on recount. I just hit myself with 4 lesser healing waves, and even though they're Elemental it still tops me off. And honestly, who uses Healing Totem now? Mana Spring STACKS!
3. Again, not a huge loss. I'll take the static 13% damage increase over a 3% crit chance ANYDAY. There are a multitude of theorycraft posts all over the web about this very topic, in various forms. And the general concsensus, for me ... is that constant spell damage, will always be better than spiked spell damage.

But in the end, it's not all about theorycrafting or min/maxing is it? Death Knights are just freakin fun. And if you prefer the Paladin, that's your business. Personally, I've parked mine till I'm ready to go back to levelling my second team. But that'll be a while.

[Tdog]

GD it now I want to try out a DK tank :(

BTW I'm LOVING a warrior tank in comparison to my Paladin tank. Though Ebon Plauge's 13% damage bonus sounds sexy as hell.

[Mosg2]

I can't imagine using Healing Spring ever now. 4x Mana Springs mean that I only ever have to drink if I happen to wipe on something. It's incredible.

Honestly, the biggest downside I see to using the DK is that you can't get the 10% hp bonus. That's significant when your'e starting heroics.

[Hachoo]

Possibly, but there are other just-as-significant things the DK gives - 86 str/agi, anti magic zone for buttloads of magic absorption, self healing to rely slightly less on shaman heals, better ability to pull entire groups including magic users if need be (death grip and/or strangulate will make magic users come straight at you), a pet to temporarily distract a mob, and WAY more dps than a paladin to boot.

Not saying the DK is better than a pally, just that a couple pally buffs hardly make the pally a better MB tank.

[Mosg2]

Possibly, but there are other just-as-significant things the DK gives - 86 str/agi, anti magic zone for buttloads of magic absorption, self healing to rely slightly less on shaman heals, better ability to pull entire groups including magic users if need be (death grip and/or strangulate will make magic users come straight at you), a pet to temporarily distract a mob, and WAY more dps than a paladin to boot.

Not saying the DK is better than a pally, just that a couple pally buffs hardly make the pally a better MB tank.

Horn of Winter does not stack with Strength of Earth. It's an either/or situation.

[Pact]

I still use 4x Healing Stream for the Aoe boss fights where i dont want to waste time with chain heal. With the Glyph to increases its effect by 20%. At 71 my normal ele shamans are healing for about 115 with each totem and full buffs, The resto shaman is doing about 160 or so. Granted they only have 1.1k spell damage fully buffed.

But in a fight like invarge in UK, I only need to focus on healing my pally as the shamans are always topped up within a few seconds by their own healing stream totems. it does work out to be around 550 hps to the whole group which isnt too shabby when there only taking 2k-3k damage every 10 seconds or so.

Will see how things work out later on in other instances anyway :)

[ahtremblay]

I have 5 shamans. I will retire 1 and replace him with a tank. I could not decide which to pick pally or DK. My thinking now is that if people are going to argue for 5 pages about the finer points of who is the best and still not reach an agreement, then my advice is to simply pick the one you like the most. I will pick the DK personnaly because its new and fresh (rotten?). And because it starts at high level.

[Mosg2]

I have 5 shamans. I will retire 1 and replace him with a tank. I could not decide which to pick pally or DK. My thinking now is that if people are going to argue for 5 pages about the finer points of who is the best and still not reach an agreement, then my advice is to simply pick the one you like the most. I will pick the DK personnaly because its new and fresh (rotten?). And because it starts at high level.

We're not arguing, we're just talking about the pros and cons. The "agreement" is that Paladins are still the easiest to multibox with due to one-button aggro generation while DK's bring more damage (ae and single target) and boosting group damage more than Pallies.

[phineas01]

Maybe I just suck at multi-boxing or using my DK but I was having an easier time with my paladin tank. I feel that overall I would benefit more from using my DK due to the higher damage output (since I'm only running four characters) but it just feels like I have to concentrate on him more than the pally and that I don't like as I think I have enough going on watching aggro and health bars and making sure my two dps are dpsing and making sure the the heals I just hit actually went off, etc, etc.

[Hor]

Maybe I just suck at multi-boxing or using my DK but I was having an easier time with my paladin tank. I feel that overall I would benefit more from using my DK due to the higher damage output (since I'm only running four characters) but it just feels like I have to concentrate on him more than the pally and that I don't like as I think I have enough going on watching aggro and health bars and making sure my two dps are dpsing and making sure the the heals I just hit actually went off, etc, etc.You don't suck at boxing, or at playing a DK. Just at reading retension :P

I kid, but it's been said numerous times in this thread and others that Paladins take less effort/concentration than Death Knights. That being said, the DK does have some nice bonuses to weigh in if you're considering an either/or scenario. As has been said, it's really up to taste/personal playstyle, and preference.

[Hachoo]

I haven't had any issues yet although I admit so far I've only done Utgarde Keep..

I really only use 2 buttons on my DK. Button one is Death and Decay (F1 Key).

I have button 2 as a macro:

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Rune Strike
/castsequence reset=target Icy Touch,Plague Strike,Pestilence,Blood Strike,Scourge Strike,Death Strike

I have that macro bound to the "1" key, and as a secondary binding alt+2

Now, on my 4 shamans I have a standard DPS macro that splits into 3 parts - this macro is bound to the '2' key

#showtooltip
/castrandom [target=focustarget,mod:alt] Lightning Bolt,Chain Lightning
/cast [target=focustarget,mod:ctrl] Chain Lightning
/cast [target=focustarget,nomod] Lightning Bolt

Last, I have a macro on all 4 shamans bound to my '3' key that lesser healing waves my tank on all 4, or if i use ctrl chain heals the entire group.

Ok so when I'm pulling I basically target a mob I want to pull and hit the '1' key on my DK to icy touch him - then I immediately hit F1 to drop a death and decay in front of me. Around this time the whole group of mobs is running into my Death and Decay which holds aggro very well. Now I just spam alt+2 and my DK will spam rune strike when its available and keep running through the castsequence - meanwhile my shamans are throwing lightning bolts and chain lightnings like crazy. if for some reason my DK needs healing I change from spamming alt+2 to spamming 1 and 3 with 2 of my fingers - DK will keep dropping rune strikes and the castsequence meanwhile all 4 shamans will do lesser healing wave on my DK, then back to alt+2 until everything is dead.

Really its only like 3 buttons for the entire combat - very easy, requires next to no thought. Haven't had to do anything more than that yet, although in the future I could see myself needing to use icebound fortitude, bone armor, anti magic shield/zone, etc, but I can just click on these.

[Saevio]

3. No +3% Crt to Judged Targets, so no extra 3% Crt bonus to bosses :(
Heart of the Crusader doesn't stack with the Totem of Wrath debuff :[

[phineas01]

Maybe I just suck at multi-boxing or using my DK but I was having an easier time with my paladin tank. I feel that overall I would benefit more from using my DK due to the higher damage output (since I'm only running four characters) but it just feels like I have to concentrate on him more than the pally and that I don't like as I think I have enough going on watching aggro and health bars and making sure my two dps are dpsing and making sure the the heals I just hit actually went off, etc, etc.You don't suck at boxing, or at playing a DK. Just at reading retension :P

I kid, but it's been said numerous times in this thread and others that Paladins take less effort/concentration than Death Knights. That being said, the DK does have some nice bonuses to weigh in if you're considering an either/or scenario. As has been said, it's really up to taste/personal playstyle, and preference.No you're completely right :)

Looking at Hachoo's post and his macros I see how playing a DK as tank would be almost as easy as a pally. I did however re-evaluate my setup and ended up respecing all three of my druids with my healer going full resto and made a /castrandom for my pally and I cleared Ramparts all the way up to the final boss but couldn't kill him. I only made two attempts though and I think with a little more focus on keeping my slaves out of the fire I could take them down with relative ease now. So YAY! to me, I feel much better as before I changed my setup I was wiping before I got the the first boss. I lost my healer once on trash though due to forgetting divine shield dumps agro :pinch:

One question for everyone about Omar in ramparts, any recomendations for when he knocks your tank in the air? I seemed to completly lose aggro when that happened and couldnt regain it utill all three of my druids were dead. It was just a stroke of luck I was able to kill him before he killed me.