DK Armor Nerf

We buffed Frost Presence when we nerfed some DK cooldowns a patch or two ago. However, we were a little generous at that time and we have ended up in a spot where in current available gear, DKs had slightly better armor, avoidance and health than warriors and paladins, and cooldowns that were much better.

We were starting to see many guilds ask their warrior or paladin to step aside so the DK could tank the hard mode encounters. This was not an isolated incident for a few guilds -- this was the kind of widespread phenomenon that really makes us take notice. If it was a boss or two that the DK was the best at, we would have just kept an eye on it. Increasingly though it was every hard mode. :( I will be the first to admit that the community is wrong sometimes. We don't think that is the case this time. The numbers backed up their conclusions pretty well.

No doubt many of you will attribute this to QQ from other players, and I'm not sure much I can say will change your mind. When players don't think a nerf is justified, that is nearly always their conclusion (the other is that we're out of touch).

This was primarily a PvE tanking nerf, but given the number of DKs who were starting to sit for long periods of PvP in Frost Presence, we don't mind at all that Frost Presence will be less attractive in PvP too.

We think there is a risk that druids will take the place of DKs now. We think that risk is small because while druid armor and health are high, their cooldowns are nowhere near the DK level. So we'll just keep an eye on it for now.

If we can get block to be a powerful mitigation stat again we realize that will change the landscape and we'll have to evaluate the staying power of all 4 classes again. For now, we hope this change will put the tanks in a much closer place. (Though if you are keeping note, we would still like to give paladins another reliable cooldown.)

When we were doing tests with Ulduar-geared tanks, the DK took less damage than the warrior even if neither tank used any cooldowns. The DK health, armor and avoidance were all higher. Given that the DK cooldowns are superior, this seemed like a problem.

Blocking contributed something paltry like 2-3% less damage taken by the warrior. To be fair, this is skewed by many Ulduar warriors avoiding blocking stats, and the outcome would be different on a very-fast swinging boss -- Algalon perhaps, though DKs seem really good on him too. (We have another thread on block going, so I would ask that you confine block discussions that don't directly affect death knights to that thread.)

We are not nerfing DK cooldowns at this time, though we might in the future, largely depending on the outcome of this change. A common suggestion is to change Icebound Fortitude to 2 minutes but restore the tanking talents (i.e. Bone Shield, Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood) to a 1 minute cooldown, altering the numbers if needed. This is little more than me hand-waving at this point however.