DK - super useless tank

[Fat Tire]

well the patch should help. More consistent dmg coming in rather than spikes. If the DK isnt using he CD properly they can take some big spike dmg. Dmg is more streamlined with pallys,warriors. Druids are having a really tough time atm tanking wise and are considered the worst tanks of the lot. They are making changes to druids, now idea if it will help.

My wife who is full t7 resto shaman and sometime subs in for one of my shamans in heroics, says she hates healing DKs (except mine). Its like " I am so bored, do I ever have to heal this guy" to "O shit is my heal going to make it in time!"

[Marious]

Hehe can't say that I have experienced the whole DK Tank being one/two shotted since I always bring my pally tank, normally I play solo cause its easier to bring him a group most groups are either still looking for a healer or tank, so I can fill in the tank position and most times get a group. My friend has a 61 almost 62 tank that he likes playing I need to get him up to 70 so he can come with me since I only run a 4 man group. But in his case he DPS's and he does a real good job about it, to the point of where he can beat my lower level guys in the charts, I am not sure how he would do as a tank I might try him out as a tank later and see.

Now as per the OP I can say the same of some healer I have run with, one run I ran with a healer priest that wa great he had no issues keeping me healed, then ran with a shaman healer and I kept dying which was no fault of the healer he/she was doing fine I was for some reason having bad luck and getting owned, ran with another priest and he/she had no issues healing me or the lv 70 of the group which would get hit a bit, alive. Then comes in another healer that let me died like 10 times in the instance, which was Old Kingdom this place is cake and fast to but this priest just could not keep me alive or the rest of the group for that matter, first boss killed us many times when we finally took boss down the priest was like "About time." Oooh that pist me off, I was so ready to leave. He could not keep us alive and then had the audacity to say about time, when you have a mana pool of 10k+ and are a healer if you can't keep your group alive there is something wrong.

So the same can be said about any class, depends on the person, if they are terrible at the game it does not matter what class they play they are still going to be terrible.

[Multibocks]

Uh your paladin should never need 4x mana totems, ever. One mana judgement and you should be fine on mana.

The thing thats great about paladins is block, it makes healing easier since the paladin consistently loses health to melee mobs. I don't run enough with DKs, but from what I have seen (anecdotal, yes) they can be dropped pretty fast by a string of hits (whereas paladins would mitigate some of that damage through block skill.) I want a DK purely for magic bosses (19.5% mitigation on magic is pimp!)

This is not true at all. This is simple math. Heres an example:

Paladin: 8% parry, 10% block
DK: 0 block, 18% parry

They mitigate (approximately) the same amount of damage. A shield doesn't absorb 100% damage, and parry allows the enemy to hit you slightly faster. Basically the fact that Paladin has block means absolutely nothing. The DK will always have a higher parry (passive skill plus runes or whatnot) and in many cases the DK might have more dodge as well.

Bottom line, if your DK tank gets a "string of hits that kills him" its because hes undergeared, not because hes worse than a paladin. Same gear level between a paladin and a DK = same amount of effort required to keep them alive.

What? No, mitigation and avoidance are completely seperate. You cant compare 18% AVOIDANCE to 8% avoidance and 10% block. No, don't do it. Also parry gibbing is only based upon weapon speed. If both tanks use 2.6 speed weapon they both have same parry gib rate(as in you swing the boss parries and his next hit is faster thus you taking more damage, not the other way around.) Most likely a DK will have a high 3 sec 2h for tanking making him actually take less damage. This is also why you don't dual-wield as a DK if you are a tank. Lastly expertise is a very very good stat for tanks if you want to avoid this phenomenon.

And my example is fine, compare: 10 hits for 2.5k each for 25k damage(after armor mitigation.) Both tanks are 25k health. Both tanks take all hits. Armor is equivalent. Paladin has 1k block and holy shield is up(which it should be on a boss.) DK takes 25k and dies, paladin with holy shield and a base 10% block takes 6 full hits for 15kand 4 blocked(40% block rate) hits for 6k = 21k. Paladin survives and DK doesnt. Yes this is contrived, but point stands. DKs seem more prone to "bursting" which is addressed in new patch notes.

[Hachoo]

Your argument is flawed because you say both tanks take ALL hits. If a DK has a parry rate 8-10% higher than the pally (likely with the gear, rune, and passive ability), then out of X number of hits theres a large chance the DK will take LESS hits than the Paladin.

[genocyde]

Uh your paladin should never need 4x mana totems, ever. One mana judgement and you should be fine on mana.

The thing thats great about paladins is block, it makes healing easier since the paladin consistently loses health to melee mobs. I don't run enough with DKs, but from what I have seen (anecdotal, yes) they can be dropped pretty fast by a string of hits (whereas paladins would mitigate some of that damage through block skill.) I want a DK purely for magic bosses (19.5% mitigation on magic is pimp!)

This is not true at all. This is simple math. Heres an example:

Paladin: 8% parry, 10% block
DK: 0 block, 18% parry

They mitigate (approximately) the same amount of damage. A shield doesn't absorb 100% damage, and parry allows the enemy to hit you slightly faster. Basically the fact that Paladin has block means absolutely nothing. The DK will always have a higher parry (passive skill plus runes or whatnot) and in many cases the DK might have more dodge as well.

Bottom line, if your DK tank gets a "string of hits that kills him" its because hes undergeared, not because hes worse than a paladin. Same gear level between a paladin and a DK = same amount of effort required to keep them alive.

What? No, mitigation and avoidance are completely seperate. You cant compare 18% AVOIDANCE to 8% avoidance and 10% block. No, don't do it. Also parry gibbing is only based upon weapon speed. If both tanks use 2.6 speed weapon they both have same parry gib rate(as in you swing the boss parries and his next hit is faster thus you taking more damage, not the other way around.) Most likely a DK will have a high 3 sec 2h for tanking making him actually take less damage. This is also why you don't dual-wield as a DK if you are a tank. Lastly expertise is a very very good stat for tanks if you want to avoid this phenomenon.

And my example is fine, compare: 10 hits for 2.5k each for 25k damage(after armor mitigation.) Both tanks are 25k health. Both tanks take all hits. Armor is equivalent. Paladin has 1k block and holy shield is up(which it should be on a boss.) DK takes 25k and dies, paladin with holy shield and a base 10% block takes 6 full hits for 15kand 4 blocked(40% block rate) hits for 6k = 21k. Paladin survives and DK doesnt. Yes this is contrived, but point stands. DKs seem more prone to "bursting" which is addressed in new patch notes.

While I do agree that it is hard to compare mitigation and avoidance.... You also went on immediately comparing them again in your own statement!!!! Parry = complete avoidance of all damage but less reliably

I think this is a slightly more reasonable comparison

10 hits for 2.5k each - 25k ttl dmg

pally has a 50+% block chance that blocks what like 1-2k dmg per block maybe?
10 hits - 5 blocked - 1 parried (4*2500)+(5*750?) = 13750 dmg
10 hits - 5 blocked - 0 parried (5*2500)+(5*750?) = 16250 dmg

DK has 40% combined parry+dodge (might be a little high %)
10 hits - 4 parried/dodged (6*2500) = 15000 dmg

The difference is a moot point because this is before taking in to account mitigation and cooldowns
Blizzard did not design this class wrong.

Also the parry-bomb death is not a complete myth but any tank worth his weight will have enough +hit/expertise to avoid this completely

And yes I'm aware of the irony of my first statement + following post

[Multibocks]

Your argument is flawed because you say both tanks take ALL hits. If a DK has a parry rate 8-10% higher than the pally (likely with the gear, rune, and passive ability), then out of X number of hits theres a large chance the DK will take LESS hits than the Paladin.

I'm not saying blizzard designed the class wrong, I'm just pointing out that DKs can be going along all fine and dandy and then BOOM they are almost dead. (High damage boss or multiple trash target tanking.) My paladin seems to have a much "smoother" damage take than what I have seen of DKs thanks to block mitigation. I was trying to point that out with an extreme example. Oh and for the above poster that provided a different combat set, you ignored the paladins dodge while conveniently adding it to the DK avoidance.

[Hachoo]

Your argument is flawed because you say both tanks take ALL hits. If a DK has a parry rate 8-10% higher than the pally (likely with the gear, rune, and passive ability), then out of X number of hits theres a large chance the DK will take LESS hits than the Paladin.

I'm not saying blizzard designed the class wrong, I'm just pointing out that DKs can be going along all fine and dandy and then BOOM they are almost dead. (High damage boss or multiple trash target tanking.) My paladin seems to have a much "smoother" damage take than what I have seen of DKs thanks to block mitigation. I was trying to point that out with an extreme example. Oh and for the above poster that provided a different combat set, you ignored the paladins dodge while conveniently adding it to the DK avoidance.

I understand what you're saying, but no one yet has posted anything in this thread that would actually show that to be the case. Not having shield block means not being able to reduce damage on incoming attacks. However, having a MUCH higher parry rating than another tank class (like a Paladin) means you will parry that many more attacks then the paladin would have, negating ALL of the damage that would have been done.

How does a paladin that will occasionally block an attack and reduce the damage = less spikes than a DK who can't block an attack but instead can parry an attack eliminating the damage completely? If anything it would seem that the DK would take LESS spike damage... I haven't run any heroics yet but my DK doesn't take spikey damage at all in regular instances so far, its actually been very smooth. I've even had boss fights where I didn't have to heal at all. I have yet to be going along fine and then suddenly "oh shit I have to heal RIGHT now".

Paladin gets attacked 10 times, parries once, dodges once, blocks twice.

DK gets attacked 10 times, parries 3 times, dodges once.

And this is assuming both classes are uncrittable at this point. I mean seriously 90% of the arguments I've seen about how DKs suck at tanking someone was comparing a fully uncrittable warrior or paladin to a DK with < 500 defense. This isn't even a remotely fair or even sort of valid comparison.

Seems like in this case the DK would actually take less damage then the Paladin. If thats not the case please let me know why (thats how I understand it anyway). The actual mitigation percentages would lead towards the above scenario based on how much more parry a DK would have then a Paladin (and most likely more dodge as well, but of course no shield block).

Furthermore, the DK has BASE 5% damage reduction to any form of magic, which the Paladin doesn't have and shield block does not mitigate magic damage. And, in the next patch, the 5% is getting boosted to 15% - this should make the DK actually LESS spikey then the other tank classes when facing off against any boss that uses a lot of magic damage.

The main original point I was trying to make in this thread was that DKs are actually quite awesome tanks. But now, I truly want someone to explain to me exactly how/why (with actual MATH) the Paladin is less spikey, because so far none of the responses have actually tried to prove anything, just spouted out about how shield block makes paladins less spikey.

[nomenquis]

Also parry gibbing is only based upon weapon speed. If both tanks use 2.6 speed weapon they both have same parry gib rate(as in you swing the boss parries and his next hit is faster thus you taking more damage, not the other way around.) Most likely a DK will have a high 3 sec 2h for tanking making him actually take less damage. This is also why you don't dual-wield as a DK if you are a tank. Lastly expertise is a very very good stat for tanks if you want to avoid this phenomenon.

Weapon speed is only part of the problem though. You should not forget that you can get parry gibd on styles. Thats why a warrior has a lot more problems with that than a paladin (warriors use parry-able attacks like devastate and a lot of others). The same is true for DKs. Pallies have the edge here since they do nearly no parry-able styles.

I understand what you're saying, but no one yet has posted anything in this thread that would actually show that to be the case. Not having shield block means not being able to reduce damage on incoming attacks. However, having a MUCH higher parry rating than another tank class (like a Paladin) means you will parry that many more attacks then the paladin would have, negating ALL of the damage that would have been done.

How does a paladin that will occasionally block an attack and reduce the damage = less spikes than a DK who can't block an attack but instead can parry an attack eliminating the damage completely? If anything it would seem that the DK would take LESS spike damage... I haven't run any heroics yet but my DK doesn't take spikey damage at all in regular instances so far, its actually been very smooth. I've even had boss fights where I didn't have to heal at all. I have yet to be going along fine and then suddenly "oh shit I have to heal RIGHT now".

Paladin gets attacked 10 times, parries once, dodges once, blocks twice.

DK gets attacked 10 times, parries 3 times, dodges once.

And this is assuming both classes are uncrittable at this point. I mean seriously 90% of the arguments I've seen about how DKs suck at tanking someone was comparing a fully uncrittable warrior or paladin to a DK with < 500 defense. This isn't even a remotely fair or even sort of valid comparison.

Seems like in this case the DK would actually take less damage then the Paladin. If thats not the case please let me know why (thats how I understand it anyway). The actual mitigation percentages would lead towards the above scenario based on how much more parry a DK would have then a Paladin (and most likely more dodge as well, but of course no shield block).

Furthermore, the DK has BASE 5% damage reduction to any form of magic, which the Paladin doesn't have and shield block does not mitigate magic damage. And, in the next patch, the 5% is getting boosted to 15% - this should make the DK actually LESS spikey then the other tank classes when facing off against any boss that uses a lot of magic damage.

The main original point I was trying to make in this thread was that DKs are actually quite awesome tanks. But now, I truly want someone to explain to me exactly how/why (with actual MATH) the Paladin is less spikey, because so far none of the responses have actually tried to prove anything, just spouted out about how shield block makes paladins less spikey.

Well, it's simply not true that a DK has a huge / meaningful advantage on avoidance. If they'd have that they'd be pretty op. Remember how in late BC avoidance became _really_ overpowered (the more you have the better any additional avoidance becomes). Also, just having some % more parry does not mean that _overall_ avoidance (miss and dodge + parry) is higher at all.

Have a look at http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t37272-p...e_raid_bosses/
On p2 someone actually wrote a sim to have a look at how parry hasting from styles + white hits affects different tanks.

[Hachoo]

I didn't look at the link but why do you say DKs dont have a meaningful parry advantage over paladins? My DK is only level 78 but has 700 strength without any enchants or anything. I would assume at 80 it will eventually get up to ~1000 strength, which means my DK will have at least 250 parry rating more than a Paladin (25% of my strength). Plus the runes you can use at this point are 4% parry for tanking, so thats >9% rating more than a Paladin at level 80

[genocyde]

[quote='Multibocks',index.php?page=Thread&postID=15 9356#post159356]

Oh and for the above poster that provided a different combat set, you ignored the paladins dodge while conveniently adding it to the DK avoidance.

I was merely providing an example of how the two balance out. I never intended that to be precise #'s for anyone, i excluded parry+dodge for the pally to make the math simpler for illustrating my point of "dk avoidance == pally block+avoidance on long fights (this is still subject to argument for 'smaller windows of bad luck are more probable the longer the fight') . I wasn't trying to manipulate numbers in my favor and nothing was "conveniently" placed to make my argument work. You don't want to know how complicated the math for tanking can actually get especially since it changes boss to boss.

Also I believe the 'Spikey' damage award goes to the deathknight for a few reasons:
1) they don't mitigate %'s of incoming damage like block does, it's all or nothing
i.e. Pally: 500(block),500(block),1000(hit),0(parry) = 2000 dmg ** numbers not based on anything factual just a visual example
DK: 0(parry), 1000(hit), 1000(hit), 0(parry) = 2000 dmg
as you can see they took the same damage over the same 4 hits but the pally's dmg was more steady.

2) most of their current mitigation comes from cooldowns. The reason they are able to tank successfully with such a spikey nature is they have several large damage reduction cooldowns they can blow upon being in any danger of dying to drop incoming damage severely.
3) they have a much higher +parry giving them a signifcantly faster attack speed (dual wielding). This actually amplifies the chance they will be parried and get parry bombed by the boss in quick succession. It is possible for a character to achieve 100% chance to hit and eliminating this risk 100% on most fights.

Now if you want to get more in depth with the math to prove any of this, I will need some time to sandbox up a deathknight and a pally with identical gear sets and compare the actual numbers of avoidance. It's hard for me to even ballpark the numbers as I have neither a pally or a deathknight tank. I run a druid tank because I consider them to fit my team the best since they have remarkable mitigation and I'm a capable multitasker to play what i consider the hardest multiboxing tank.

Druids are uncrittable at 80 with absolutely NO gear on. My druid is slightly over 50% dodge and very close to 100% chance to hit. The reason I prefer the druid tank however is i can shift into cat and still hold down 2500 dps in tank gear and tank specced (Bear DPS isn't bad either but they have the weakest aoe tanking ability).