World of Warcraft®

At 34, you could press Tiger Palm until your finger bleeds. Not that you'd want to...

10/02/2012 01:02 PMPosted by Krinu

2. DKs underwent fairly minimal changes compared to the other tanks. We already HAD the active mitigation system, so the bugs are mostly out of ours and the fine tuning is done.

I think it's this.

It took me a while to get used to paladin's active mitigation. It can be good when you're not in a PuG and scrambling all over the place.

DKs changed much less than paladins and warriors did so if you played them at least a little they "feel" better because you're not really learning a whole new tanking method for that class as far as how their mitigation works.

With paladins and warriors you did have to get past the learning curve.

That being said. DKs do have, on the surface, a simpler active mitigation system than Paladins or warriors.

Notice what is in italics please before you jump down my throat. I haven't leveled up my DK to 90 like I have my main paladin. I'm sure I'll discover something new.

But putting aside the utility and other extra class things, it's easier for me to manage active mitigation on my DK than it has been for my paladin and yes some of that *is* due to learning a new system on the paladin tank, but some of it isn't.

Fangthane, I don't think anyone should jump down your throat for what you said. DKs do have an easy system to manage for active mitigation, once you get past the skill cap that is runes.

I like to think those of us that have been playing DKs since WotLK have gotten quite good at managing our runes, and with our experience the mitigation model is very simple.

I remember discussing the DK's armor situation back in Cata when the bonus armor from blood presence was too low.

And someone not only jumped down my throat they did so after only quoting part of what I said so that it was out of context. Once bitten twice shy and all that...

DK's system is nigh choiceless.

The warrior's mitigation vs damage choice is pretty huge. Both forms takes up to half your rage.

And then you have to choose between block and barrier. You have to figure out if your vengeance is high enough that barrier is worth using no matter the situation.

It is kind of annoying. DK's "paved" the way with their active mitigation (really, death strike with all its buffs is pretty good damage regardless), but now the warrior's choice of mitigation actively nerfs their dps.

That's kinda more difficult to choose.

If by "actively nerfing" their dps, you mean "heroic strike spamming less" then... I'm glad that is gone, I'd rather have to think about how to survive (as a tank) than "how many times can I mash this 1 little button"

It could be a lot of things.

1. We have more health than other tanks in order to compensate for having less mitigation. When we're tanking things that simply don't hit that hard, the increase in health is worth vastly more than the reduced mitigation. Taking 90 damage and healing back 15 health on a 550 hit point pool is way better than taking 75 damage on a 450 hit point pool.

2. DKs underwent fairly minimal changes compared to the other tanks. We already HAD the active mitigation system, so the bugs are mostly out of ours and the fine tuning is done.

3. In the same vein as the above, DK players have had a whole expansion to get used to the active mitigation model. If you take the median monk player and median death knight, odds are the DK player is going to be vastly better at fully utilizing her abilities than the monk due to having years, literally, of practice.

4. Heroics don't hit that hard. Death Knights, due to having a static absorb with a fixed minimum that scales with our health, will ALWAYS be the best tank for content that's overgeared. Every time we get that minimum shield (7% of max HP), we're overpowering content in a way that all the other tanks cannot. Because the heroics of this expansion are WAY easier than the Cata ones, we "overgear" them a bit simply by qualifying.

5. The +15% bonus health from the random dungeon finder increases our mitigation, as well as giving us more of a bonus than other tanks due to our vastly better stamina scaling. In a dungeon finder, I have 550k health fully buffed. Throw a flask and food in, and I'm nearly to 600k.

I could go on...

this is exactly it 635k hp in heroics before Vamp blood

being able to vamp blood every other trash pack if you want is also nice.

10/03/2012 01:03 PMPosted by Druimeister

Bear is now harder to play so it doesn't surprise me that they seem squishier. I feel (uh oh, there's that word again) like I'm taking more damage now than before but I also feel like I'm contributing much more to my own healing than I was before (of course it's hard to feel a passive ability).

I wish there was a little more synergy between the bear AM skills like there is with the pally ones. For a paladin, hitting my Shield of the Righteous buffs my heal spell. For a druid, it doesn't, and maybe I'm doing it wrong but Frenzied Regen feels (uh oh, there's that word again) well, kind of weak. Even with a full 60 rage. It would be cool if, say, Lacerate buffed your FR up to a max of three stacks... but then again, I'm probably doing it wrong since I'm still getting used to this whole AM thing because I could never stand to play a DK.

DK feels good right now, but I also like the Warrior system. If I understand correctly, the Warrior Shield Barrier can mitigate any damage, correct? The DK shield only mitigates physical, but has the advantage that damage taken can produce bigger shields, no matter what kind of damage it is. A DK has to eat the damage to produce a buffer and then be healed up, hence the buff to Stamina.

A Warrior seems like they can do more to prevent damage in the first place, while also having a higher static DR.