Sweet, DK tanking nerf.

[Multibocks]

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

•Frost Presence: Magic damage reduction is now 10%, down from 15%.
•Howling Blast: Base damage and scaling doubled. This ability no longer deals bonus damage to targets with Frost Fever. Cooldown increased to 10 sec.
•Rune of the Fallen Crusader: This weapon enchant now provides only 15% strength, but its chance to proc is doubled.
Blood

•Blade Barrier: Now grants 1/2/3/4/5% damage reduction instead of 2/4/6/8/10% parry.
•Dancing Rune Weapon: Damage done by this pet reduced by 50%, but duration doubled.
•Hysteria: This ability now causes the target to lose health rather than take damage.
•Might of Mograine: No longer increases critical strike damage bonus and instead increases damage on its listed abilities by 3/7/10%.
•Vampiric Blood: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.
•Will of the Necropolis: This ability now has a 15 second cooldown on how often it can occur.
Frost

•Glacier Rot: Third rank added, and damage bonus increased to 7/13/20%.
•Guile of Gorefiend: No longer increases critical strike damage bonus and instead increases damage on its listed abilities by 5/10/15%.
•Lichborne: No longer improves your chance to be missed.
•Unbreakable Armor: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.
Unholy

•Bone Shield: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.
•Outbreak: Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 10/20/30% and Scourge Strike by 7/13/20%.
•Scourge Strike: Damage increased.

Nice, we lose 5% magic mitigation. Also 10% parry from Blade Barrier, Unbreakable Armor no longer includes a miss chance and Bone Shield cooldown increased. Oh, and Will of the Necropolis can only occur once ever 15 secs. Sweet, was there any other tanking stuff left to nerf?

edit: And then they throw this in there?


Enchant Weapon - Blade Ward *New Enchant* - Permanently enchants a weapon to sometimes grant Blade Warding when striking an enemy. Blade Warding increases your parry rating by 200 and inflicts 600 to 800 damage on your next parry. Effect can stack up to 5 times and lasts 10 sec. This enchantment requires the wielder is at least level 75.

Uhm ok so DK tanking was too good and then you throw in something that can stack for 1000 PARRY. WTF Blizzard, wtf indeed.

[Hor]

There's been some comments this way and that about this, I MT for my guild with a DK. And I'm actually happy with the changes in general. Then again, I'm an Unholy Tank. Much as you might miss the parry chance from Blade Barrier, the Damage Mitigation actually proves mathematically to be superior. As for Bone Shield, I actually save this one for things like Enrages. I don't really see how this is going to effect me adversely. All I see is subtle buffs...

[Multibocks]

Care to explain the subtle buffs? Im not seeing it.

edit: let me do some more research into this, but I DEFINITELY do not see "subtle buffs"

[Hachoo]

This entire thing doesn't really affect me at all as an unholy DK tank except the bone shield cooldown nerf, and I only use Bone Shield on boss fights anyway... Doesn't really seem entirely like a tanking nerf just a rebalancing of DKs in general.

[emesis]

This entire thing doesn't really affect me at all as an unholy DK tank except the bone shield cooldown nerf, and I only use Bone Shield on boss fights anyway... Doesn't really seem entirely like a tanking nerf just a rebalancing of DKs in general.

Umm, you don't have Blade Barrier? Hard to imagine that you'd skip 10% parry for a measly 5 talent points in the first tier of Blood. Going from 10% avoidance - which BTW did NOT suffer from diminishing returns - to 5% mitigation is a HUGE nerf. Period.

That notwithstanding, it's a warranted one. DK's have had pretty much an unreasonable amount of avoidance compared to other tanking classes, with several talents & weapon runes not subjected to dimishing returns. Blade barrier and both the defense and parry weapon runes come to mind as not being subject to DR iirc. I'm pushing 65% avoidance in iLvl 200 gear on my DK; there are many, many boss fights in heroics where I don't toss a single heal to my tank. Scaling this to Ulduar gear, well-geared DK tanks were going to have >90% avoidance.

One of the threads documenting this issue and likely helping provide the impetus for this nerf is here at EJ: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t47413-imbalance_tanking_classes_aka_avoidance_hoooo/p2/#post1113031

Bottom line - the blade barrier nerf is a very big one, but it mostly brings DK avoidance back down to a reasonable level needed for Ulduar gear to scale appropriately. DKs will certainly stay excellent tanks.

[emesis]

There's been some comments this way and that about this, I MT for my guild with a DK. And I'm actually happy with the changes in general. Then again, I'm an Unholy Tank. Much as you might miss the parry chance from Blade Barrier, the Damage Mitigation actually proves mathematically to be superior.

Huh? Can you explain or cite a reference for this?

I have a hard time seeing how 5% mitigation can be considered superior to 10% avoidance. I suppose the 5% mitigation applies to spell damage as well as melee, but still.

[Hor]

The subtle buff is that we gain mitigation ... we don't have shields. That damage mitigation is quite nice, as far as I know it does effects incoming spells. I agree with the above poster; that this is more of a retooling than a huge nerf, but who knows. This may or may not even go live. imo, try it out before you cry foul. The math comment is that you have a constant damage mitigation (ie it's not on a cooldown, or dependant on blood runes being on cooldown, etc. It's flat damage mitigation). Whereas with Blade Barrier you do have to actually get your blood runes down, it means there's a little less we "have" to keep in our rotation. it's not incredibly hard to do. But it does leave you open at the beginning of a boss fight, which seems to be the most dangerous point of combat for a DK.

[emesis]

The subtle buff is that we gain mitigation ... we don't have shields. That damage mitigation is quite nice, as far as I know it does effects incoming spells. I agree with the above poster; that this is more of a retooling than a huge nerf, but who knows. This may or may not even go live. imo, try it out before you cry foul. The math comment is that you have a constant damage mitigation (ie it's not on a cooldown, or dependant on blood runes being on cooldown, etc. It's flat damage mitigation). Whereas with Blade Barrier you do have to actually get your blood runes down, it means there's a little less we "have" to keep in our rotation. it's not incredibly hard to do. But it does leave you open at the beginning of a boss fight, which seems to be the most dangerous point of combat for a DK.


Say a mob swings at you 10 times, if he hits he does 1000 damage.

10% parry would be expected to parry 1 hit - saving you 1000 damage - on average.

Let's assume that you're at 60% avoidance; on average the mob will hit you 4 times. 5% mitigation saves you 1000 * 0.05 = 50 HP per hit. Over 4 hits, that's 200 HP.

How is this nice? Yes, mitigation "smoothes" out the damage that you take, making it less spiky and more predictable. But that's a 5-fold damage difference.

I'm not crying foul - I made the point that this is a _very_ justifiable nerf as DK avoidance is way out of proportion to other tanking classes ATM. But it's a big nerf still.

With respect to needing to burn your blood runes to activate blade barrier, there's nothing in the PTR notes that suggests to me that this is going to change with shifting from parry % to mitigation.

[Bigfish]

The tanking nerf has me scratching my head. Seems like a lot of sweeping changes for stuff that wasn't overpowered to begin with.

[Multibocks]

The subtle buff is that we gain mitigation ... we don't have shields. That damage mitigation is quite nice, as far as I know it does effects incoming spells. I agree with the above poster; that this is more of a retooling than a huge nerf, but who knows. This may or may not even go live. imo, try it out before you cry foul. The math comment is that you have a constant damage mitigation (ie it's not on a cooldown, or dependant on blood runes being on cooldown, etc. It's flat damage mitigation). Whereas with Blade Barrier you do have to actually get your blood runes down, it means there's a little less we "have" to keep in our rotation. it's not incredibly hard to do. But it does leave you open at the beginning of a boss fight, which seems to be the most dangerous point of combat for a DK.

You mean like have 80% armor buff when in frost presence? Your post smells of Blizzard apologist, but that aside: I love it when people say, 'omg its the test realm, it could change.' I bet that if you looked, 90% of stuff that makes it on the test realms GOES LIVE. In fact I can only think of a few things they have reversed from the test realm, hunter changes come to mind. But that was after massive outcry, and a lot of it still went live. So please don't pull that excuse for this being ok. Also I dont need to test it, the math is there and it clearly shows this is a nerf.

[Hachoo]

The subtle buff is that we gain mitigation ... we don't have shields. That damage mitigation is quite nice, as far as I know it does effects incoming spells. I agree with the above poster; that this is more of a retooling than a huge nerf, but who knows. This may or may not even go live. imo, try it out before you cry foul. The math comment is that you have a constant damage mitigation (ie it's not on a cooldown, or dependant on blood runes being on cooldown, etc. It's flat damage mitigation). Whereas with Blade Barrier you do have to actually get your blood runes down, it means there's a little less we "have" to keep in our rotation. it's not incredibly hard to do. But it does leave you open at the beginning of a boss fight, which seems to be the most dangerous point of combat for a DK.


Say a mob swings at you 10 times, if he hits he does 1000 damage.

10% parry would be expected to parry 1 hit - saving you 1000 damage - on average.

Let's assume that you're at 60% avoidance; on average the mob will hit you 4 times. 5% mitigation saves you 1000 * 0.05 = 50 HP per hit. Over 4 hits, that's 200 HP.

How is this nice? Yes, mitigation "smoothes" out the damage that you take, making it less spiky and more predictable. But that's a 5-fold damage difference.

I'm not crying foul - I made the point that this is a _very_ justifiable nerf as DK avoidance is way out of proportion to other tanking classes ATM. But it's a big nerf still.

With respect to needing to burn your blood runes to activate blade barrier, there's nothing in the PTR notes that suggests to me that this is going to change with shifting from parry % to mitigation.This is a very narrow view and is leaving out all sorts of details, such as the fact the 5% mitigation works even on attacks that can't be parried, for one, not to mention others.

[Hor]

It's a nerf, yes. But I honestly feel like some people are blowing it out of proportion. Since the news of it was released I've heard several people, including RL friends complaining that DKs aren't even going to be able to tank anymore, which I feel is simply not true. Does it suck that my favorite class is getting some nerfs? Yes. But I'm trying to stay positive about it.

[X-Ifist]

Its a test server..............................
the patch is not comming out in about 4 weeks alot is gone change in that time

[hardcoded]

Its a test server..............................
the patch is not comming out in about 4 weeks alot is gone change in that timeWhy yah gotta go and ruin a perfectly good bandwagon?

[5fingersofdoom]

Well I recently changed my DK's from Frost to Unkholy/Frost at the time I was hating the fact I needed to do it,but now after seeing these nerfs i'm glad I did.
I only mention this as from what I read some time ago,Unholy was getting a nerf and Frost was getting a buff,from what i'm reading here this is all bad for Frost,especially Howling Blast.
OFC i'm talking about PvP here,but still i'm getting a little tired of Blizz pissing around with specs so wildly,it truly smacks of a lack of depth in designing DK's skills,pretty much reinforces my view that WoTLK was badly rushed out IMO.

[genocyde]

I don't think this shows wrath was rushed at all. They are just trying to do 4 years worth of balancing on a DK in 4 months. I think with this class really having nothing to compare to balance wise... They are just having trouble balancing a plate tanking dps caster class with silences and 4k dps in blues. I think the DK is just a terrible class to attempt to balance PvE and PvP with the same "all specs, all jobs" idea that is not working for them.

Also, they said they are just bringing all the tanks back to even with eachother. You can cry all you want about dk nerfs, I'm right there with you. My bear tank is losing 5k health and 9k armor currently on the PTR with my nerfs.

They are just trying to bring warrior and pally tanks back into competition with bears and DK's.

[Zerocool2024]

You know, I am starting to see Multibocks ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=User&userID=11771') as Satan, every time he posts something about DK's it's a nerf.... Lol.

[Multibocks]

Its a test server..............................
the patch is not comming out in about 4 weeks alot is gone change in that time

Seriously, read my damn post a few up. Blizzard's "test" servers are not what you think. They should be called "pre-live load-test servers" as most of whats thrown up on them doesnt change and goes live. The real test servers are only open to employees that actually "test." The only thing that seems to matter when they test patches is loading(will this screw up lag?) and bosses. Class changes pretty much go through.

[Multibocks]

Its a test server..............................
the patch is not comming out in about 4 weeks alot is gone change in that timeWhy yah gotta go and ruin a perfectly good bandwagon?

You mean like the one you are on?

[Multibocks]

It's a nerf, yes. But I honestly feel like some people are blowing it out of proportion. Since the news of it was released I've heard several people, including RL friends complaining that DKs aren't even going to be able to tank anymore, which I feel is simply not true. Does it suck that my favorite class is getting some nerfs? Yes. But I'm trying to stay positive about it.

Nowhere did I say it was the end of DK tanks. I just called a duck a duck. It's a nerf, that's what I called it.

[Hor]

Nowhere in my statement did I say that you were saying it was the end of DK tanks, in retrospect I can see where you might have drawn that conclusion from my statement, but I was not including you. I was saying that I've heard others say it, and I think there's a little too much "the sky is falling" over these changes. Let's just agree to disagree on the severity of this nerf (we can both atleast agree that there is some nerf bat swinging going on). In the end, I don't think these changes are going to affect me much, and yes if anything, I think as an Unholy DK some of these changes will actually help me. I admit however, that it IS a bit odd that Blizzard says they want to encourage more people to be Blood and Frost, then ... nerfs tanks that aren't Unholy.

My question is, with the changes we've seen thus far. What specs are people looking at?
Most likely I'll be going with something like this:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=j0EMoZ0xZfg0Ihckgh0Rcout

[5fingersofdoom]

I don't think this shows wrath was rushed at all. They are just trying to do 4 years worth of balancing on a DK in 4 months. I think with this class really having nothing to compare to balance wise... They are just having trouble balancing a plate tanking dps caster class with silences and 4k dps in blues. I think the DK is just a terrible class to attempt to balance PvE and PvP with the same "all specs, all jobs" idea that is not working for them.

Also, they said they are just bringing all the tanks back to even with eachother. You can cry all you want about dk nerfs, I'm right there with you. My bear tank is losing 5k health and 9k armor currently on the PTR with my nerfs.

They are just trying to bring warrior and pally tanks back into competition with bears and DK's.I disagree DK's are simply a Hybrid of existing class designs,with 4 years of data,experience, and game design its not such a radical new class.
Druids can tank and cast.
Paladins have stun,bubble and consecration.
We have warlocks
Warriors have Rage and direct melee DPS.
Pets are nothing new.
Death grip is a new feature,but doesn't need balancing it seems.
Warlocks have DOT's
Mage frost CC's
It isn't anything that original,my critisism is that the changes they are making really could clearly have been sorted before launch.
How long have DK's been in Blizzards design pipeline?
Take all these changes in the context with other serious shortsightedness,eg Arena AoE/Burst,Resislience and PvP gear from instances and all the problems of PvE gear in PvP,I say again it smacks of a rushed job to me,and I feel like atm i'm paying to play a polished Beta.

[Multibocks]

Nowhere in my statement did I say that you were saying it was the end of DK tanks, in retrospect I can see where you might have drawn that conclusion from my statement, but I was not including you. I was saying that I've heard others say it, and I think there's a little too much "the sky is falling" over these changes. Let's just agree to disagree on the severity of this nerf (we can both atleast agree that there is some nerf bat swinging going on). In the end, I don't think these changes are going to affect me much, and yes if anything, I think as an Unholy DK some of these changes will actually help me. I admit however, that it IS a bit odd that Blizzard says they want to encourage more people to be Blood and Frost, then ... nerfs tanks that aren't Unholy.

My question is, with the changes we've seen thus far. What specs are people looking at?
Most likely I'll be going with something like this:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=j0EMoZ0xZfg0Ihckgh0Rcout

I dont think my group, even with a druid healer, can effectively operate without blood aura. So no matter what I take, it will have blood aura and possibly worms in it. (Might as well if I go that deep.)

[Multibocks]

You know, I am starting to see Multibocks ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=User&userID=11771') as Satan, every time he posts something about DK's it's a nerf.... Lol.

haha, sorry Zero, I post what I think is worthy of posting. Most of the time lately it seems its nerfs =(

[Zerocool2024]

Nowhere in my statement did I say that you were saying it was the end of DK tanks, in retrospect I can see where you might have drawn that conclusion from my statement, but I was not including you. I was saying that I've heard others say it, and I think there's a little too much "the sky is falling" over these changes. Let's just agree to disagree on the severity of this nerf (we can both atleast agree that there is some nerf bat swinging going on). In the end, I don't think these changes are going to affect me much, and yes if anything, I think as an Unholy DK some of these changes will actually help me. I admit however, that it IS a bit odd that Blizzard says they want to encourage more people to be Blood and Frost, then ... nerfs tanks that aren't Unholy.

My question is, with the changes we've seen thus far. What specs are people looking at?
Most likely I'll be going with something like this:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=j0EMoZ0xZfg0Ihckgh0Rcout

I dont think my group, even with a druid healer, can effectively operate without blood aura. So no matter what I take, it will have blood aura and possibly worms in it. (Might as well if I go that deep.)Heh, I just roll with the punches.
They took away my HB, I dealt with it and was still able to clear my dungeons.
They take away some of my Defense, (I can manage).
They take away my Aura, I'M FUCKED :cursing: ...Proper that is :P ... But I will find a way to deal with it.

[genocyde]

I disagree DK's are simply a Hybrid of existing class designs,with 4 years of data,experience, and game design its not such a radical new class.
Druids can tank and cast.
Paladins have stun,bubble and consecration.
We have warlocks
Warriors have Rage and direct melee DPS.
Pets are nothing new.
Death grip is a new feature,but doesn't need balancing it seems.
Warlocks have DOT's
Mage frost CC's
It isn't anything that original,my critisism is that the changes they are making really could clearly have been sorted before launch.
How long have DK's been in Blizzards design pipeline?
Take all these changes in the context with other serious shortsightedness,eg Arena AoE/Burst,Resislience and PvP gear from instances and all the problems of PvE gear in PvP,I say again it smacks of a rushed job to me,and I feel like atm i'm paying to play a polished Beta.

First off... Druids cannot tank and cast, they can tank OR cast (there is a huge difference especially for PvP or bosses). Paladins bubble has been under huge review because of arena and the whole 5xRet pally killing an entire team during 1 bubble+wings moment.

None of that is all that relevant to what I meant though. All those things you named do not happen on the same classes. Yes, the abilities are for the most part not that original and a lot of them we're redesigned back into other classes (eg. knockbacks on pre-existing aoe) so that everyone was a little more balanced and had the shiny things the new DK had.

The problem comes when you combine them all. It's when you can take a DPS class that is doing near top level DPS if not top level, and make them a capable PvP class and tank without changing anything. Frost presence gives them all the tank power of any other tank without the key downfalls that even the other hybrid tank/dps (bear/cat) can't come anywhere near. Yes druids CAN go bear form but they lose all DPS capability period and without key talents some would argue are not capable of tanking but I assume Dk's suffer that to some extent as well. You can not cast cat skills in bear form. You cannot cast all warrior skills in defensive stance. You cannot tank much with a ret pally.

DK's have the only class CC that is a 100% AoE lockdown that does not break on all damage; except maybe divine hymn, that shares CD's with all other priest cc's and has a terribly long timer. They can go immune to almost all CC + Magic + tank mitigation against physical. That is all fine, except they can still pump out good damage while doing this. It merely needs tuned, they are not that far ahead of other classes. There just needs to be some damage consequences for being the best survival class in the game.

The tanking issue is obviously known and being tuned. PvP balance is probably close enough and I'm sure we all wish they'd stop tuning PvE with arena based changes.

What I meant was, the skills themselves can be tune by precedent but the class cannot. Eg. There aren't any shadow priests running around that can break 25k health, throw a 5 second silence, go completely immune to CC and Magic with 70% physical mitigation while healing themselves for ridiculous amounts while dealing out massive instant damage while their 12 summons are beating the snot out of everything else.

There has to be limits.

[Svpernova09]

I hate nerfs. As a feral druid, I *really* hate nerfs lately.

DeathKnights needed nerfs. All through beta and all through the pre-Wrath discussions DKs were going to be an OFF-TANK. That was their purpose. After Wrath released I was running Resto with a DK tank clearing heroics (we were both 2/3 of the first 3 to 80 in our guild) and he tanked everything. He was tanking things (imho) he shouldn't have been able to. And I had a very easy time healing him. (I'm a 2 year feral druid with only prior resto experience was 8/11/42 S2-S3) So I was new to the PvE healing game, but still had no problem steam rolling him through heroics. DeathKnights went from OT to MT, very fast, and no one really said anything. It took a bit to start scaling back how well of a tank they were. Hell, I know how that is, I was feral during BC pre 2.4 when it was next to impossible fora feral druid to be taken seriously as a MT, we were always relagated back to OT / DPS.

Blizzard said that the DK talents stacked too well, with 5 DKs clearing instances / heroics I'd have to agree. You couldn't do this with mages, rogues, etc. (Sure as I say this, watch someone prove me wrong :_D) So of course nerfs are incoming. They said preWrath Dks would be the offtanks raiding guilds would need to survive huge amounts of magic damage on the tanks. Sure, thats great. Especially with the reluctance a lot of raiding guilds had towards DKs. So now you have this class that is so powerful they can MT anything, DPS with a gear swap. (Good thing they can't raid heal or bye bye to the druid class). IMO DKs were the BEST Wrath launch tanks out there. I think even with the nerf they're still going to be a great tank. But they're simply being brought in line with Prot Paladins and Prot Warriors. I don't mention feral druids here, because imo they're seriously screwing up feral bears.

Nerfs are never fun, but my problem with Blizzard's "Bring the player, not the class", is how come they made DKs SO great at MTing Sarth for 3 Drakes? Most guilds that downed 3D used a DK MT on Sarth. It seems like one big contradiction. But who knows. I've dropped 3d as the MT on Sarth with no problems. 2 of the 5 guilds on Madoran that have downed 3D used a feral MT. I don't think there is anything wrong with fights like 3d being hard on 1 certain tanking class, everyone needs a challenge, but don't be all "Bring the player, not the class" and make fights where you almost HAVE to bring a certain class.

[Multibocks]

I dont remember these discussions of DKs being OTs. All I remember was them saying they would be the magic heavy boss tank. Also your post reeks of class envy and elitism. Seriously who would choose a class that could only be an OT, aka bitchtank? (Which you are so obviously pissed at being relegated to.)

Dk100000345: Hey guys it cool if I join your guild to tank?
DruidMT: I guess, but your bitch ass can only OT.
DK100000345: Even if I get good gear?
DruidMT: Yep, sorry it's Blizzard's vision.
DK100000345: Oh, that sucks.

[Multibocks]

So you are saying because you walked uphill both ways to school in the snow that everyone behind you has to as well. Blizzard has been balancing this game forever, it didnt take a brain surgeon to see that there are a lot of things about DKs that should never have gone live. Also, let's get something straight. I am not going to quit over these changes, so stop making it out like I'm going postal. I pointed out that it is a nerf and that I didnt like it.

[genocyde]

I dont remember these discussions of DKs being OTs.
me either

Also your post reeks of class envy and elitism.
I didn't see any elitism, but there is some class envy coming from every class towards DK's at some point (hence the QQ and nerfs)

Seriously who would choose a class that could only be an OT, aka bitchtank? (Which you are so obviously pissed at being relegated to.).
Hybrid is Hybrid. That was the whole point, hybrid DPS is balanced to be ~5% under pure DPS. Since there are no heal/tank only classes this balance does not exist there and they get full capabilities albeit some in the form of utility over output.

I'm sure a large chunk of DK QQ is generated through PvP but that doesn't make the re-balancing any less necessary. That or give warriors (DK's closest comparison as far as tank/melee only) the ability to do 5kDPS on a gear swap in Prot spec.

Back in the day, raids were built for 40 people. My theory is they did this so you could bring sub par people like feral DPS or shadow priests or whatever. Now as they slowly balance all the fail out of certain classes they are able to tune content more precise and still have all classes capable of getting in a raid. Having 9/10 guilds with a DK or Feral tank is not acceptable in this model. They can either make warriors / Pally's better or DK/Feral worse... They chose DK/Feral nerfs all around.

[Svpernova09]

Calm down holmes.


No one is telling you to quit. I'm saying the DK nerfs are justified. I don't think I'm elitest or class envious. I have a 73 DK I've done some tanking on, I didn't like it. How am I being elitest? Someone who doesn't agree with you == elitest? Would you rather people just reply "QQMOARDKNUB" or something along those lines? Feral Druids were relegated to OTs in BC because we had no way to effectively AoE tank. Some druids managed ok without it, most didn't. I fully support balancing tank classes to where any tank class can MT. Hell, thats the reason I'm a MT now. I have no gripes with DKs MTing, by all means. I wouldn't want to be relagated to just an OT position either.

I agree with Fur, look at the other tank classes history, you have no room to gripe at all. It could have been much harder. Nerfs suck, but shit happens. You should enjoy what Blizzard has learned and didn't screw up with DeathKnights that they DID screw up with previous trials with tanking classes.


A class that can tank really well in any spec, DPS really well in any spec, AND PvP really well in any spec isn't OP? /facepalm



Edit: I went looking for one of the original announcements that talked about DKs as an OTing class. I can't find it because cardplace gives file not found errors in their archive before August. Regardless what made that stick out in my mind was they were saying that so all the other tanking classes wouldn't be up in arms about ANOTHER tanking class. But hey, 4 tanking classes that do really well = win for raiding guilds. But obviously WoW isn't balanced around raids.

[genocyde]

But, was it sarcasm? :)

Any more WoW seems balanced around arena, and raids seem tuned to classes that learned to play in arena. Otherwise known as pick the right class and stand behind the right pillar = loot.

[Tombs]

I played a prot warrior for a long long time so I find a feral upset that another class that can do many things with the same spec hilarious. That said, I think the whole omg look what other classes can do with one spec argument is moot now, dual specs are coming. Only part of the argument that is going to remain is how much pvp viability remains if you choose two pve specs and blizzard is trying pretty hard to make every spec have some pvp viability.

[Tombs]

I think the OT comment considering DKs was something along the lines of, "DKs should be able to OT raid content regardless of spec with appropriate gear." They made the class a little too powerful in that I can MT anything as a DPS spec. (except maybe Sarth3D w/o AMZ)

[Svpernova09]

I played a prot warrior for a long long time so I find a feral upset that another class that can do many things with the same spec hilarious.
*snip*

I'm not upset at all. I'm just defending the need for class changes. No other class can do this, why should DKs be the only one?


That said, I think the whole omg look what other classes can do with one spec argument is moot now, dual specs are coming.
I think you may have missed the part where I said Dks can PvP, Tank, DPS well with ANY of their 3 specs. I don't tank so good in Balance, or Resto, and I don't heal so good in Feral.

[Bigfish]

Seems to me the ones most likely to be upset are the DKs who only tanked. I mean, that's where I'm sitting, and I think this nerf sucks. Were it a DPS nerf or a PvP nerf, I'd likely shrug my shoulders and say "meh", but then you just have an entire other subsection of the population crying that THEY got nerfed.

[Tombs]

You can
Dks can PvP, Tank, DPS well as feral. Keep this argument grounded in PvE and you have a class that can Tank and DPS arguing about a class that can Tank and DPS. PvP is highly anecdotal, comes in many flavors, and depends a lot on group composition. I don't PvP so I am going to leave it at that.

[Tombs]

Seems to me the ones most likely to be upset are the DKs who only tanked. I mean, that's where I'm sitting, and I think this nerf sucks. Were it a DPS nerf or a PvP nerf, I'd likely shrug my shoulders and say "meh", but then you just have an entire other subsection of the population crying that THEY got nerfed.Mostly yeah, I do tanking and dps but nerfs don't bother me, played a warrior for nearly four years so I've weathered a lot of nerfs. Blizzard doesn't want to nerf anything into oblivion they just want an even playing field. What ever it is they'll get it right with some time.

[Svpernova09]

You can

Dks can PvP, Tank, DPS well as feral. Keep this argument grounded in PvE and you have a class that can Tank and DPS arguing about a class that can Tank and DPS. PvP is highly anecdotal, comes in many flavors, and depends a lot on group composition. I don't PvP so I am going to leave it at that.Yes I realize I can tank AND dps in feral spec. But what you're not realizing is I can't tank in balance, and I can't tank in resto, and I can't heal in Feral.

DKs can tank in Blood, Frost, Unholy.
DKs can DPS in Blood, Frost, Unholy.


See the difference now?

[Tombs]

Your class is different than my class. It fills three roles, but only can only fill two with any one spec (balance can pewpew or heal in a pinch / resto can heal and pewpew in a pinch). You're comparing apples to oranges. I am trying to compare oranges to oranges. DK in any spec most clearly resembles a feral druid. They both fulfill the same roles. They both have the option to tweak talents a little one way or the other. With dual specs you'll be able to do it all with feral and resto.

[Zaelar]

Mages can't tank or heal in any spec. Nerf druids.

The difference between a feral dps spec and a feral tank spec is like 4 points. The difference between dk tank and dk dps is like 20. 32/39 isn't tanking anything that a fury/arms warrior can't.

[puppychow]

so going back to the original topic does anyone know how this affects multiboxing DK tanking? Right now the way I see it DK tanks provide a big DPS boost over other tanks and have decent TPS/aggro, so make the best multiboxer tanks -- i in fact have a super geared prot pally who has been sitting idle for 2 weeks while I level my DK (level 76! almost there!)

After patch 3.1, what are the multiboxing goodies that are removed? I don't care about ulduar tanking or whatnot, just how do the nerfs affect multiboxers? Unholy aura is gone so no party 15% move speed buff, right? What about the 13% spell dmg buff, is that gone? I don't think heroics will be "harder" with a DK tank in terms of his damage taken, so anything else thats a big deal?

Either way I'm having a blast with my DK, its a lot more fun class to play than prot paladin imo. Just having a ghoul buddy run along side me is fun :)

[Zaelar]

If you spam your heals with your dps macro, the blade barrier change might benefit you in that damage is a little more consistent, even though it's a huge nerf in the grand scheme of things. All of the talented cooldowns got changed to 2 minutes, so if you worked around alternating them with IF every 30 seconds or so that's out. I'm not sure how the damage changes help/hurt boxers though. Diseases being more mandatory hurts if you don't have a 100% hit rate, as that's more attention required.

[Tombs]

Nothing much should change as far as using a DK as a boxing tank. 0 runic power IBF is gone as well but that shouldn't be too big of a deal either.

[genocyde]

You can
Dks can PvP, Tank, DPS well as feral. Keep this argument grounded in PvE and you have a class that can Tank and DPS arguing about a class that can Tank and DPS. PvP is highly anecdotal, comes in many flavors, and depends a lot on group composition. I don't PvP so I am going to leave it at that.

The PvP argument can be somewhat ignored even tho DK's need nerfed in PvP because, well... feral druids are just fine in PvP and almost as strong as DK's. Holy pally's are the real arena OP.

Saying that a Feral can DPS, Tank, and PvP in the same spec is just straight wrong. I have to drastically change my spec around between tank and DPS and it's a hell of a lot more difference than 4 points.

In cat spec I lose 12% straight mitigation (magic and physical), 12% armor from items which may or may not bonus off bear form, 6% dodge, and Infected Wounds (druids version of the boss slowing talent that all tanks have in some way).

In Bear spec I lose about 1k-1.5k DPS off of my kitty.

The big difference lies in the difference between forms and presences. I lose all of my dps abilities and buffs that cat form offers when i go to bear form. Do DK's lose most of their buffs and core abilities to go to frost presence? Honestly, I don't know.

I think theres been a lot of classes complaining about each other with no concept of what's going on with the other class. I just figured I'd educate on the druid perspective. After all we are both in the tanking getting totally nerfed phase here. Our DPS does not compare to DK's, but as of 3.1 it will if the PTR changes go live (i think we may add more but not lose any of whats on there).

Now someone can educate me as to how presence switching and re-speccing affects a DK when trying to tank and DPS or u can continue your thread. I just feel some druids came in here going "HAHA, welcome to hybrid nerfing!" and I saw a few posts of completely druid-uneducated comments saying that we are just as strong as DK's. I don't know if we are or not, but most of the druid comments in here were wrong so far from a raid druids point of view.

From a multiboxing point of view, I wish druids had the kind of AoE tanking a DK does and the 13% spell damage buff and I'm sure DK's wouldn't mind having my health and armor and the fact that i'm crit immune in PvE with no gear on.... but alas my health and armor are toast as of 3.1, I'll just have to be glad i've got battle res and other utility.

EDIT: Typo

[Tombs]

@undefinedgeno (breaking the quote train :D )

DKs give up about the same stuff speccing for tank stuffs. 15% armor, 5% dodge, situational 10% parry, some can't get 20% attack speed slow and are stuck with the default 10%, and a loss of 1-2K dps ballpark. Takes around 20 talent points out of dps stuff.

Presences are nothing like stances or forms. All of your abilities are available in all presences. The bonuses provided by the stances are the big part. We don't have many tanking abilities, only three baseline ones come to mind (rune strike, anti-magic shell, and icebound fort), we have lots of core abilities that are dual purpose. Most of our tanking abilities are deep talents so each tree has some trick the others can't do.

Presences:
Blood - 15% more damage, 4% of damage done in healing
Frost - 80% armor increase, 15%? less magic damage taken, increased threat generation (130-145% probably the later), and 10% more health
Unholy - 15% haste, lower GCD to 1 sec, 15% increased movement speed

You bring the group 5% melee crit and a little heal proc so you don't get 13% increased spell damage. :)

[Tombs]

Whoops that was supposed to be 5% physical crit. Doesn't change much with your argument though :\ I don't think I've ever seen anyone boxing hunters.

[Multibocks]

@undefinedgeno (breaking the quote train :D )

DKs give up about the same stuff speccing for tank stuffs. 15% armor, 5% dodge, situational 10% parry, some can't get 20% attack speed slow and are stuck with the default 10%, and a loss of 1-2K dps ballpark. Takes around 20 talent points out of dps stuff.

Presences are nothing like stances or forms. All of your abilities are available in all presences. The bonuses provided by the stances are the big part. We don't have many tanking abilities, only three baseline ones come to mind (rune strike, anti-magic shell, and icebound fort), we have lots of core abilities that are dual purpose. Most of our tanking abilities are deep talents so each tree has some trick the others can't do.

Presences:
Blood - 15% more damage, 4% of damage done in healing
Frost - 80% armor increase, 15%? less magic damage taken, increased threat generation (130-145% probably the later), and 10% more health
Unholy - 15% haste, lower GCD to 1 sec, 15% increased movement speed

You bring the group 5% melee crit and a little heal proc so you don't get 13% increased spell damage. :)

Actually Frost Presence is now only 10% magic mitigation. Pretty much inline with warriors defensive stance.

[Tombs]

On the PTR anyway. Defensive stance got dropped to 5%.

[Souca]

0 runic power IBF is gone as well but that shouldn't be too big of a deal either.

I actually think this is one of the bigger nerfs. A lot of DK abilties are dual cooldown/resource. The problem is that when you need to do IBF, you have to have the runic power and the cooldown. The cooldown is managable, but the rune power is situational. Runestrike is a very powerful threat generation ability but also somewhat random. With the change to the glyph there will be more situations where IBF would have saved you but you just didn't have the runic power because you happened to runestrike before.

I know there are other multi resource abilties that other classes have to deal with, but it just gets overwhelming with a DK at times. I've never played a warrior, but does last stand or shield wall have a rage requirement?

This change will be less impact on tanks that are well geared, but generally thats always the case.

- Souca -

[Souca]

EDIT - To make sure I'm understanding this right - you guys are talking about the IBF - GLYPH nerf right? The base ability isn't changingThey are changing the glyph to make it provide the maximum protection and not base it of your defense skill -and- they are increasing the cooldown to 2 minutes.

The glyph change seems odd since they retooled IBF to base its damage reduction off your defense. This was supposed to keep this from being too effective for dps and pvp where you aren't sitting at 540 defense. By changing the glyph they are nullifying that downside and making everyone get the max damage reduction. Then to balance that out I'm assuming the cooldown was increased.

I could be wrong on the intention, but some times I just wish they'd tell us how they expected us to play since the players never seem to get it right and Blizzard has to tweak things to force us into a playstyle they won't reveal.

Also, does anyone remember in beta when they completely striped Druid tanking to nothing and then told druids that they would be the large health pool tanks? That was the druid thing! So I'm not sure I understand why they think druids have too much health, wasn't that the design? I'm all for normalization, but saying "bring the player not the class" and then adjusting balance because "we don't like that people aren't bringing warriors and paladins". I didn't like being an OT all through BC on my druid either and listening to the warriors explain why Druids and Pallys weren't real tanks, but what do I know.


Edit:
Glyph of Icebound Fortitude ('http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=43545')

Icebound Fortitude ('http://ptr.wowhead.com/?spell=48792')

Hmm, looks like PTR lists it at 1 minute cooldown. Not sure where I saw 2 minutes.

Edit 2:
Unbreakable Armor: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute. Thats what threw me off.



- Souca -

[Tasty]

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

•Frost Presence: Magic damage reduction is now 10%, down from 15%.
•Howling Blast: Base damage and scaling doubled. This ability no longer deals bonus damage to targets with Frost Fever. Cooldown increased to 10 sec.
•Rune of the Fallen Crusader: This weapon enchant now provides only 15% strength, but its chance to proc is doubled.
Blood

•Blade Barrier: Now grants 1/2/3/4/5% damage reduction instead of 2/4/6/8/10% parry.
•Dancing Rune Weapon: Damage done by this pet reduced by 50%, but duration doubled.
•Hysteria: This ability now causes the target to lose health rather than take damage.
•Might of Mograine: No longer increases critical strike damage bonus and instead increases damage on its listed abilities by 3/7/10%.
•Vampiric Blood: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.
•Will of the Necropolis: This ability now has a 15 second cooldown on how often it can occur.
Frost

•Glacier Rot: Third rank added, and damage bonus increased to 7/13/20%.
•Guile of Gorefiend: No longer increases critical strike damage bonus and instead increases damage on its listed abilities by 5/10/15%.
•Lichborne: No longer improves your chance to be missed.
•Unbreakable Armor: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.
Unholy

•Bone Shield: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.
•Outbreak: Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 10/20/30% and Scourge Strike by 7/13/20%.
•Scourge Strike: Damage increased.

Nice, we lose 5% magic mitigation. Also 10% parry from Blade Barrier, Unbreakable Armor no longer includes a miss chance and Bone Shield cooldown increased. Oh, and Will of the Necropolis can only occur once ever 15 secs. Sweet, was there any other tanking stuff left to nerf?

edit: And then they throw this in there?


Enchant Weapon - Blade Ward *New Enchant* - Permanently enchants a weapon to sometimes grant Blade Warding when striking an enemy. Blade Warding increases your parry rating by 200 and inflicts 600 to 800 damage on your next parry. Effect can stack up to 5 times and lasts 10 sec. This enchantment requires the wielder is at least level 75.

Uhm ok so DK tanking was too good and then you throw in something that can stack for 1000 PARRY. WTF Blizzard, wtf indeed.

I stopped caring when a DK healed himself for 20k while bashing my face in. :)

[Souca]

I stopped caring when a DK healed himself for 20k while bashing my face in. :)I'm guessing they had 30k health? Glyph of Rune Tap, Improved Rune Tap, and Vampiric Blood is around 60%+ heal, and it used to be able to crit.

- Souca -

[Souca]

I stopped caring when a DK healed himself for 20k while bashing my face in. :)I'm guessing they had 30k health? Glyph of Rune Tap, Improved Rune Tap, and Vampiric Blood is around 60%+ heal, and it used to be able to crit.

- Souca -

Paladin's get Lay On Hands - sounds similar to me.And bubble. For what it's worth, I'm not anti-bubble, but it does drive me crazy to have kill a pally twice sometimes.

- Souca -

[Multibocks]

0 runic power IBF is gone as well but that shouldn't be too big of a deal either.

I actually think this is one of the bigger nerfs. A lot of DK abilties are dual cooldown/resource. The problem is that when you need to do IBF, you have to have the runic power and the cooldown. The cooldown is managable, but the rune power is situational. Runestrike is a very powerful threat generation ability but also somewhat random. With the change to the glyph there will be more situations where IBF would have saved you but you just didn't have the runic power because you happened to runestrike before.

I know there are other multi resource abilties that other classes have to deal with, but it just gets overwhelming with a DK at times. I've never played a warrior, but does last stand or shield wall have a rage requirement?

This change will be less impact on tanks that are well geared, but generally thats always the case.

- Souca -

Not IBF, but unholy talent Bone Shield is now 2 min cooldown on test.

[Zaelar]

They are changing the glyph to make it provide the maximum protection and not base it of your defense skill

Last I checked this is completely wrong. There is no cap for IF's defense, unless you want to think as the most possible defense obtainable as the cap in which case you'd still wrong. It increases linearly, indefinitely. The glyph sets it to 30% minimu, which is useless for tanks considering you get 35% reduction for being at 540 defense.

[Multibocks]

Hmm strange I thought I read that 540 defense gives you 50%, I could be wrong though!

[Hachoo]

No, either 535 or 540 defense gives 35%. It can go up from there but for DKs its pretty pointless to go higher on defense.

[accretion]

Death Knights were a business decision, pure and simple.

Blizzard created a new class, with a high "cool" factor, many strengths, and no real weakness, in order to ignite interest in 3.0 and bolster LK sales. Their entire positioning of the class, from Day 1, has been to maintain DKs as a superior overall option (PvP/PvE/leveling) long enough maintain player interest until the content patches start rolling out. As such, I predict we will see a series of seemingly reasonable nerfs to the class over the next few months, that when taken together will place the DK back on more equal footing with other tanking classes. This nerf is just the beginning, in my opinion.

Death Knights now account for nearly 20% of ALL characters, by far the widest ratio disparity in WoW's brief history. One could even say it dwarfs the Hunter's previous death grip on that distinction (me so funny). Blizzard's wise desire for equilibrium will not allow this to continue for much longer, hence the impending nerfs and player QQing.

Nerfs suck (just ask my Hunter team) but, sadly, this strategy was predictible.

[KvdM]

Death Knights were a business decision, pure and simple.I find that suggestion very doubtful. Lets just say that there's a reason why game designers don't make bussiness decisions and management, marketing, etc don't make game designs :)

As for the nerfs, rebalancing has happened each time any class has undergone a major talent tree change. Deathknights aren't an exception.

[accretion]

Death Knights were a business decision, pure and simple.I find that suggestion very doubtful. Lets just say that there's a reason why game designers don't make bussiness decisions and management, marketing, etc don't make game designs :)

As for the nerfs, rebalancing has happened each time any class has undergone a major talent tree change. Deathknights aren't an exception.I'm not saying accountants designed the class, but I am suggesting that at some level, people with a vested business interest in promoting a strong WoW franchise (perhaps even senior devs) knew that it was in WoW's best interest to introduce a class that erred on the side of OP.

Introducing a "boring" or underpowered class wouldn't generate the right kind of momentum for Bliz, at a time where they were expected to show a bump in subscriptions and revenue with LK.

And yes, re-balancing is common. My point is that you won't see DK's being re-balanced upward anytime soon.