So who's going for deathknight main tank in WOTLK?

[-silencer-]

The reason Paladins are the perferred MB tanking class is due to the minialization of micromanagement as has already been stated in this thread. The REASON paladins require so little micromanagement is for one simple reason....Consecration.

Well, consecration is a biggie, but being able to front-load threat with a full mana pool is a big advantage over a warrior or druid, especially with trigger happy party members. Since spell damage boosts most threat sources significantly and stacks with righeous fury, and it's available on virtually every piece of gear, threat management is simple. Also, since holy damage cannot be mitigated by anything short of magic immunity/buff/debuffs, it's the best source of dealing damage/threat.
Just look at the list of protection paladin benefits:
Threat Multiplier: Righeous Fury with talent improvement (+90% threat from holy damage).
Global threat Increaser: Avenging Wrath (+30% increased damage for 20s every 3 min)
Single target threat increaser: Judgement of the Crusader
Single target thread stacker: Seal of Vengeance + Reckoning
AoE returned damage: Retribution Aura
AoE skill: Consecration
Passive block returned damage: Blessing of Sanctuary, Shield Spike (physical dmg)
Semi-active block returned damage: Holy Shield
The fact that nearly all of these stack, many are enhanced by +spell damage, and all can be used at the same time with relatively little work makes a paladin tank worth playing. They're all great reasons for playing a paladin tank as a multiboxer. How much better of an opener can you get than Ret Aura, Righteous Fury, Blessing of Sanctuary, Seal of Crusader, Avenging Wrath, Avenger's Shield, Judgement of Crusader, Consecration, Seal of Vengeance, Holy Shield to open an attack on a group of mobs or just a boss? From the time Avenging Wrath is cast to Holy Shield, around 5 seconds will have passed with a massive amount of threat already on the targeted and surrounding mobs. You'll still have 15 more seconds (about 1.5 consecrations) of Avenging Wrath to continue building massive threat.. sometimes, it seems unbalanced.

[TheBigBB]

As I understand it so far, the Death Knight starting area is instanced somehow - meaning we might not be able to bring in a higher toon to powerlevel them.

So my current plan is to make four Death Knights (all dps to level with) on my four accounts, and run them as a team through that starting area. They ought to level pretty quickly.

Edit: As far as using one as my main tank - when the DK matches my Paladin, I'll then figure out which I like tanking better on. (E.g. Which is easiest to control mobs in instances with while multiboxing them.)

Yes, the DK starting zone is instanced because it takes place in the past before EPL was completely overrun. You MUST complete the events there to move on.

[Morx]

I honestly don't think that its going to matter come expansion what tanking class you are. I've read a number of blue posts that says they will still all have unique abilities, but they are leveling the playing field for all tanks.

Warriors, Druids, and DKs will have equal AoE abilities to Consecrate
Paladins, Druids, and DKs will have oh shit buttons equal to Last Stand
Druids armor on items is getting greatly reduced to make their armor more in line with the other tanks.

They don't want to make 1 tank required.. such as , why use anything else if you have a prot Paladin for Hyjal. Or why use anything but a druid on a hard hitting mob like Tidewalker.

Be interesting to see how they handle it, but what I've heard that I do not agree with is how a DK doesn't have to choose a specific talent tree to be a tank. They can cherry pick from any of the trees and do just fine as a tank which baffles me. So their Blood line, tanks as well as Frost or Unholy? doesn't matter? Just weird... :thumbdown:

[Drizzit]

Yes, the DK starting zone is instanced because it takes place in the past before EPL was completely overrun. You MUST complete the events there to move on.

I think that they did this so on PvP servers people cannot camp there the day of the release with there lvl 70 and take out the toons as soon as they spawn. Or a lvl 80 after a month.

[McBooty]

Oh, you don't need to PL them through that starting area. (Nor can you enter as it takes place in the past) It's a really fun and fast-paced quest line, and a lot of it isn't grinding or killing as much as pure fun quests.
Sure they start at 55, but before they're even allowed out into the real world they're 57.999 at the lowest. (kinda a pain when you leave the starter area, enter a zone, and DING from discovery experience)
Yeah if you wanna run 4 or 5 at the same time I could see that as feasible. I only remember one or two collection quests.
If you've got a mage with TP: Shatt or a warlock set up you could probably make a few thousand gold a day just charging 10g per port (and they'll have the 10g as a result of their starter quests too, and probably gladly hand it over)

[Skuggomann]

Pala > DK

[noir]

I've got a 72 DK in the beta.

They're not ideal for AOE tanking. Better than wars/druids, worse than pallies.

They're more DPS than tankadins, but squishier.

I think they do better on short boss fights though. And definitely better against caster bosses.

[Jaese]

Be interesting to see how they handle it, but what I've heard that I do not agree with is how a DK doesn't have to choose a specific talent tree to be a tank. They can cherry pick from any of the trees and do just fine as a tank which baffles me. So their Blood line, tanks as well as Frost or Unholy? doesn't matter? Just weird... :thumbdown:

What Blizz means is that they can tank 5-mans easily enough as any spec, just like they want ret palys and arms wars (fury too, but it'll be harder) to do the same.

For raids you'll have to spec tank to get anywhere as a tank, but they don't want either of the 4 class tanks to be required to progress.

[Morx]

That makes sense, and I guess it is a good thing. I kind of liked the fact that warriors couldn't do it all, and either could pallies, and either could druids. With them all being the same, whats stopping a guild from running Warriors only?

I see some false, but very ingrained stigma's regarding what a class can or rather, can not do arising from this.

[valtrex]

Currently, my main account has an epiced out 70 hunter.. and then I have 4 additional accounts where my shaman reside.
I will definitely get them all to level (edit) 80, then level a deathknight on my hunter account.. so that I can have a heavy tank for instances at 80..

EPIC! Your thoughts on this matter? Any idea if there are any synergy openings for deathknight + elemshams?

My current situation is that I often have to search for a tank to do heroics with.. which I absolutely hate. The reason I started multiboxing was to never have to depend on anyone else to do the stuff I want, and now I depend on them to do heroics.. bleh! Really looking forward to pimping out a deathknight with tanking gear.

Ill probably make an all DK team just to annoy all the people who will be crying about DKs.