#0 - June 26, 2009, 9:40 p.m.
In General
Frost Presence
Total stamina increased by 8%.
Armor contribution from cloth, leather, mail and plate items increased by 60%.
Damage taken reduced by 5%.
Although currently 10% health is too much and scales too well, the 6% stamina on the PTR puts us behind the other tanks. By bumping it up 2% should be enough to put us even with the other tanks, although not so much as to put us ahead. And by other tanks, I exclude druids, for obvious reasons.
In Blood
Scent of Blood
You have a 15% chance after dodging, parrying or taking direct damage to gain the Scent of Blood effect, causing your next 1/2/3 melee hits to generate 5 runic power. In addition, increases your stamina by 1/2/3%.
As you'll see below, the stamina bonus was removed from Veteran of the Third War and moved here, to make it accessible to every Frost and Unholy. Aside from the base 5/8/5 and thanks to the past Blessing of Sanc nerf, Scent of Blood is the talent closest to being picked up by every spec. As well, it is not one in dps builds and what have you, so wouldn't interfere there with that balancing act. With the high importance of max health and effective health, for all DK tank specs to be equal, they need to be even in this department.
Veteran of the Third War
Increases your total Strength and healing received by 2/4/6%, and your expertise by 2/4/6.
Stamina bonus removed for aforementioned reasons. The healing modifier gives Blood a passive tanking bonus, without being so strong as to be mandatory for any DK tank. Thanks to WotN and Spell Deflection, blood already deals best with unexpected burst (and expected burst revolves around cooldowns which are balanced by details below), and to give them another EH modifier would be too much. If they are supposed to have the whole self healing/increased healing feel, between this, DS, and VB, you have it, without upsetting balance.
Vampiric Blood
Rune cost removed.
Cooldowns need to be able to be used on the fly. That is why they are off the GCD. A resource cost works against that, and causes you to either risk not having a rune up when needed, or severely gimping your threat 'just in case'.
In Frost
Anticipation
Increases your armor value from items by 3/6/9/12/15% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 6/12/18/24/30%.
Removes the current nerf which is in place on the PTRs. Our armor is approximately ~1000-1200 ahead of warriors/paladins, which math has shown to be almost exactly the amount we need to offset the lack of block. Nerfing it makes no sense.
Unbreakable Armor
Rune cost removed.
Increases your armor by 25% and your total strength by 25% while reducing damage from all attacks by [1000 + 15 * ((Defense - (Level*5)]. Lasts 20 seconds.
Rune cost removed for aforementioned reasons. The old UA had two issues; 1) You could get armor capped, thus causing it to lose value and 2) It did not affect magic damage. The first issue is solved by the past 80->60% frost presence nerf in combination with the Inspiration change. The second matter is solved by the variation of the current UA - except instead of scaling it with armor, it scales it with defense, thus synergizing with IBF (and frost getting an increased uptime on IBF) and tanking gear as a whole, without interfering with PvP.
In Unholy.
Magic Suppression
You take 2/4/6% less damage from all magic. In addition, your Anti-Magic Shell reduces physical damage taken by 5/10/15%.
The idea here is not to give Unholy another cooldown. 15% is too little to be effective, anyways. The idea is to give it an ability which causes it to not fall behind on magic-light fights. In an encounter with heavy magic damage, Unholy is fine due to the 6% reduced magic damage alone, but on physical? They need something, and this is it. On a primarily-physical fight, you don't need to save AMS for any large burst, and as such can use it regularly almost whenever it is off cooldown. This would amount to 1.66% physical damage reduction average over time, a bit worse than Improved Frost Presence, but that is offset due to being able to use it on command. It has a similar relationship to WotN. However on a primarily-magical fight, you are going to use AMS when you have to use it anyways, thus the bonus hardly matters as much. And besides, with the cap on AMS, the current secondary affect of Magic Suppression is quite weak.
Bone Shield
Rune cost removed. Now off the GCD.
Rune cost removed for aforementioned reasons. Bone Shield is one of the only cooldowns on the GCD, which is quite illogical. Back when BS was 40%, perhaps this was balanced, but nowadays there is no need, and it hurts Bone Shield's effectiveness.
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