Build 9658 - DK Tanks Nerfed -- HARD

Yes, death knights tanks were too good on almost any kind of challenging fight. The number of cooldowns and high avoidance were too blame. (Druids were also too good on almost every fight, but bringing their health down may have fixed that.)

We want you to be able to tank any content in Ulduar, but you can't be the best tank for every fight.

We need to see what effect these changes have. We are not done with 3.1 yet. Constructive feedback and concerns are appreciated. You certainly do not have to agree with us, but please keep your posts free of ranting and insults if you want to be able to keep posting here.

Unbreakable Armor also has a 2 min cooldown, just like VB and BS.

Frost is not intended as the tanking tree. DKs should be able to tank using appropriate builds from all 3 trees. It is likely that some builds will be superior for some encounters of course.

When we originally designed the DK, Frost was going to be the tanking tree. We later soured on that implementation.

Thanks, Hanzgrimm. I am going to requote it below because a lot of that is still true today.

I understand that DK tanks are going to be upset over the changes. These were big nerfs. But we have invested a lot into this class and we aren't going to see it chased out of Ulduar, heroic dungeons or PvP. We have plenty of time left on the PTR to see what these changes do. We still have a lot of knobs to turn, from Blade Barrier to Frost Presence. I know it may be convenient to accuse other tank classes of trying to get yours nerfed, but today you may feel exactly how they felt a few days ago. Players often give too much credit to forum QQ, especially when their class is nerfed. We gather a lot of data that generally isn't available to players. We know what happens with various classes tanking.

Q u o t e:
Most of the arguments and concerns on this topic that I see seem to come down to these issues. Correct me if there are any I'm missing.

1) Blizzard doesn't intend death knights to be end-game tanks.
Ghostcrawler: Yes, we do.

2) Death knights don't have the mitigation to tank end-game bosses.
Ghostcrawler: We don't have enough information yet to make that call, but the design is that they do, so if they don't, we'll change the numbers. There are a lot of knobs to turn from Forceful Deflection to Frost Presence to Icebound Fortitude to passive bonuses.

3) Death knights don't have a traditional tanking tree, which feels weird.
Ghostcrawler: Totally valid concern. But we want to try and fix some of the problems with traditional tanking, such as it being not fun enough to attract enough players or utility being marginal when not tanking.

4) Because death knights don't have traditional tanking trees, I can't get all the tanking talents.
Ghostcrawler: True. Also by design. You CAN get all the tools you'll need for tanking in any tree though.

5) Death knights can tank and dps with the same spec.
Ghostcrawler: Maybe. Warrior and paladins can tank and dps with the same spec too, though a hybrid warrior tends to be less than optimal for either role at the cutting-edge of raiding. The same should be true of death knights.

6) Because death knights can tank and dps, it isn't fair to existing plate tanks who have to give up a lot of dps in order to tank.
Ghostcrawler: Also valid. Just remember the design is that any DK or warrior should be able to tank a 5-player dungeon. A dps death knight, with no tanking talents and crappy gear isn't going to be a very impressive Naxxramas MT. Maybe the death knight doesn't have to give up as much as existing tanks, though that may also be something we want to fix in the other classes.

7) Because death knights need to spend so few talents on tanking relative to warriors or paladins who spend a great chunk of talents on tanking, it's not fair.
Ghostcrawler: This is a valid concern. First, I'm not sure the numbers are all that different. Second, gear and skill probably have a much bigger impact on tanking effectiveness than spec. Third, a lot of a warrior's best tanking abilities are core to the class, though talents definitely help (and a few talents help enormously). Fourth, and most important, it doesn't seem like smart design to keep designing trees in such a way that chase off tanks.

That's a pretty controversial statement, so I should elaborate. We don't know for sure that the Prot tree scares off tanks. A lot of you adore tanking just as it is, thank you, and I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong. (I've tanked for years and I still love it.) There are some things that aren't fun about tanking that have nothing to do with the prot trees: inability to solo, stress at wiping the raid, stress at often having to lead and mark, stress at having to play every night lest your friends have to cancel the run, etc.

On the other hand, we do think the prot trees (and even Feral) could use some improvement, and you've seen a lot of those changes already. Starting over with a class' talents would be a lot of work and probably really anger players, so that isn't terribly attractive. But here is a new class without a lot of baggage, and a chance to try something different with the talent trees. Clearly a lot of people are excited about it, so maybe we're onto something. If it isn't your thing, that's cool. But make that decision for aesthetic or other reasons, not because you're convinced DKs will be bad tanks. Unconventional doesn't need to mean inferior.