Tanks and mitigation

Ok now that they have nerfed super avoidance to the ground and tanks actually take a fair bit of damage it's time to talk about mitigation or lack of...

I find it interesting that my DK and Paladin are similarly geared (a few epics, but otherwise > ilvl 347), however my paladin is much much easier to keep alive. DKs are once again burst tanks, they take a lot of damage and then do a lot of self healing. Its too early in the expansion to declare a winner, but I'm leaning towards the paladin.

Now I have no experience with warriors or druids for this expansion, so I'm limiting it to what I've experienced. The great thing about paladins is the constant stream of self healing. Taking lots of damage? No problem, switch to seal of light and use your holy power for heals. DKs do the same thing, except its Death Strike and there is no healing in between.

Now what really surprised me is that DKs have less armor than paladins, by a fair margin. I believe my paladin has almost 10k more armor than my DK. That's huge and add to the fact that I block almost every attack (30% less damage) makes me start to wonder why I'm rolling a DK tank for PvE.

My healing for the DK usually goes something like this, Renew, Shield, Heal OH SHIT, Flash Heal, Flash Heal... oom. My paladin is more a linear progression. I can see his health going down slowly while using my most efficient heal and I realize that I will need to use a more expensive heal, but I have lots of time to react and then I can go back to mana conserve mode.

I'll still use my paladin, cuz whats the point of a paladin, 3 DK and priest in pvp? Paladin as ret be worthless and Priest as shadow would be weird as well. Just some observations and I'm sure there is a flaw here, but proof is in the pudding. I can tank a lot more and more efficiently with my paladin.

Im enjoying my pally tank, like you say its more consistent. When I heal my DK friend who tanks sometimes in instances his dammage is so spikey its very hard to heal him. Plus I run out of mana like no tommorow in this expansion. Im verging on the idea that has been given about 2x hybrid healers.

I find those DK results hard to believe to way you claim.

What sort of "great ... continuous stream of healing" are you seeing out of paladins that relieves them from comparative "OH SHIT"?

When you say, "no healing in between" I am thinking your not speced blood, is that the case?

DeathKnights have always taken more damage comparatively to Paladins / Warriors / Bears. What I find amusing is at the start of wrath they nerfed bears over and over and kept taking armor from bears and giving it to DKs. It still didn't help.

DeathKnights aren't bad tanks, they're just different and you have to be able to adjust.

I thought my DK was spikey in damage taking in wrath, but since I started using her again with my new PvE team I actually like her a lot. With my tauren pally healing, I'm not having a ton of "OH SHIT" moments, but I'm not 85 yet with this team either. I can't even get past regular Romogg Bonecrusher or whatever his name is yet.

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Originally Posted by HPAVC

I find those DK results hard to believe to way you claim.

What sort of "great ... continuous stream of healing" are you seeing out of paladins that relieves them from comparative "OH SHIT"?

When you say, "no healing in between" I am thinking your not speced blood, is that the case?

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Give me a little credit. I have specced my DK correctly and he is in the right presence. I already listed the healing paladins get, seal of light and word of glory, with the talent that can refund your holy power 30% of the time. Death Strike has to wait 5 seconds for maximum effectiveness and the in between times he's getting pummeled (30k armor vs my pallies 40k.)

Really the main reason I think paladins are better is block. 30% off a hit is huge, its like having 30% more armor. So a third more armor and block makes for a nice steady stream of damage. DKs don't have a steady stream, its either 30k armor with no block (aka getting your ass beat time) or you just used Death Strike and have gained some health and a shield effect. Which in most heroics lasts 1 maybe 2 hits if you crit.

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Originally Posted by Multibocks

Really the main reason I think paladins are better is block. 30% off a hit is huge, its like having 30% more armor.

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I really do hope you mean 40%, cause if you, as a protection Paladin, have not taken Holy Shield, i don't know what to say :eek:

And yes, holy shield should be up at all time really.

I found my Prot paladin to be very hard to kill, even in raids when others seem to just get curb-stomped.

Paladins have a super ton of self healing that you can easily get up into the 2-3k HPS on yourself and still maintain threat. Seal of Insight, 3 holy power glyphed word of glory, and every minute you can pop that aoe super spam heal Holy Radiance. 20% damage reduction every minute. 20% with deathward every 3 minutes, and 50% every 3 minutes and a 5-10min 180k free heal with lay hands.

Ive put divine protection into my normal rotation so its always being used just like trinkets. We have 2 others to use when things go wrong. An unused cool down is a wasted cool down in my opinion.

Deathstrike more :p

Stacking mastery helps with the spike dmg and yes its "optimal" to deathstrike every 5 or more second but if you spam it you're still getting the heals and tbh the dmg incoming pulls every bubble you give yourself off so quick that you should be spamming it anyway. Also using icebound fort and blood boil ( for the debuff) on a regular basis makes a world of difference. Rune tap as well.

I've just recently dinged 85 on my 4 dk 1pally team, and have about an average ilvl of 330 or so. I've found that I can do several dungeons with no cc at all, grim batol being one of them, as all 4 blood spec. The healing and dmg prevention this class is capable of just owns if you spam death strike.

I've yet to level my pally team so I can use my othe pally as a tank but imo the dk does just fine if you do it right lol

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Originally Posted by Cyphoner

I really do hope you mean 40%, cause if you, as a protection Paladin, have not taken Holy Shield, i don't know what to say :eek:

And yes, holy shield should be up at all time really.

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Heaven forbid someone fatfinger a 3 instead of a 4.

I heal tanked CoC last night on my five holy paladins. The alliance flying above didn't even attack me as I did it. Hopefully I'll be able to do some non-heroics here once I get some prot gear.

I'm really getting frustrated with my DK tank. He's sitting about 350 iLvL and my disc priest struggles to keep him alive on heroic bosses. Chaining Greater Heals don't heal him enough. I know with the macro I have going on my pally tank that he can almost keep himself alive on most bosses that are purely physical. Magic bosses are a bit harder. I just tried heroic BRC again with my DKs, who are putting out good dps, and my tank went down like a champ with my priest spamming Greater Heals. He used every cooldown and then I used pain suppression on him.

I'll try driving from the DK tank next time, but I dont expect it to change much. I want to move my pally tank to my DK team, but that doesnt make much sense pvp wise and I like to keep my groups together and not mix-and-match them.

hmm seems like you're going to benefit more after patch tomorrow :) dont get discouraged, deathstrike more!! i often times dont use ANY runic power in my two step macro, just so death strike heals more. Try it after tuesday :D

My crap geared DK tanked Argaloth tonight and healed for 604,000. It was like having half of a dedicated healer there plus tanking. They are really odd to tank with after using my pally. I wouldn't mind gearing him up to see what they can really do.

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Originally Posted by ghonosyph

hmm seems like you're going to benefit more after patch tomorrow :) dont get discouraged, deathstrike more!! i often times dont use ANY runic power in my two step macro, just so death strike heals more. Try it after tuesday :D

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Ooooh ok shields being able to stack is very very nice. This may help quite a bit!

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Originally Posted by pinotnoir

My crap geared DK tanked Argaloth tonight and healed for 604,000. It was like having half of a dedicated healer there plus tanking. They are really odd to tank with after using my pally. I wouldn't mind gearing him up to see what they can really do.

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Oh they heal fine, they dont heal consistently unfortunately. DeathStrike in its current iteration:
1. Doesnt heal enough
2. Can't be used often enough

If they made it heal for less, but had a 2 second CD and was spammable, I would be a super happy camper. I could then see how fast I needed to heal him. As it stands now I can be at full health and almost dead 3 seconds later (boss + adds). If they were like paladins they would block most of the hits and be ~40% more health than a DK (they both have similar healing abilities) for the same duration. Paladins are nice because they smooth out the damage. DKs are not so nice in that category, but bring a crap ton of utility.