To quote someone from another thread:

"DK is the easiest to kill tank when he has a bad run of the RNG and/or his clickies are on cooldown, none will ever use one as a MT"

Tank based on avoidance is a bad design

Does blizz awknowledge this as a problem? Or do they think its just their flavour? The sooner i know blizzard's stance on this, the sooner i can start leveling a paladin, cuz i want a tank.

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Q u o t e:
To quote someone from another thread:

"DK is the easiest to kill tank when he has a bad run of the RNG and/or his clickies are on cooldown, none will ever use one as a MT"

Tank based on avoidance is a bad design

Does blizz awknowledge this as a problem? Or do they think its just their flavour? The sooner i know blizzard's stance on this, the sooner i can start leveling a paladin, cuz i want a tank.

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Blizz is aware and acknowledges that an "avoidance tank" does not work in WoW. DKs are not "avoidance" tanks.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/18/10532267902-dk-tanks-need-alot-of-work-still-long-post.html

from Ghostcrawler

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Q u o t e:

The last time I looked, DK dodge and parry were not much higher than warrior dodge and parry. They would need quite a bit more before they were "the avoidance tank," and as people are fond of pointing out, an avoidance tank wouldn't be a great tank in WoW unless boss mechanics changed significantly.

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Now, this is the last word I can find on it. DKs do have significantly more Dodge and Parry on their set gear than Wars at this time.

Being an unholy death knight, and being at defense cap, i can say that i have pretty much no problems tanking any heroic, provided my group can dps enough.

I am at 540 defense, and 41% avoidance, with 60% dmg reduction from armor. All this plus all my dk tanking tricks, means that i am actually very easy to heal and in emergencies my "oh crap" buttons do more for me than other tanks.

Every single tank will get killed by a streak of bad luck. DKs are not unique in this.

I have tanked lvl 80 instances as a lvl 76 better than most lvl 80 tanks I group with. In fact I have finished off bosses and a couple bad pulls solo(had a 3 pull where the healer died to aoe almost instantly, the tank went down pretty hard and fast after that, we had 1 almost dead and 2 still at full life when he died. I had my tanking gear still on from the previous fight where I was OT so I just went into frost presence and started trying to get aggro. It was me + a lvl 80 rogue and we finished the last 2 mobs off and I was still at 50-60% life w/o a healer.)

I have solo pulled gun'drak pulls at lvl 76(mobs are 77+) and usually come out at 100% life. I am a little over uncrittable for my lvl , have about 55-60% avoidance for my lvl and about 60% physical mitigation from armor at my lvl(I know it will be alot less at 80).

Unless there is some huge thing that happens at 80 that causes DK's tanking mechanics to all of a sudden suck where the other tanks get something that make them good... I don't see any problem in MTing Naxx within a couple hours of hitting 80.

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Q u o t e:
Every single tank will get killed by a streak of bad luck. DKs are not unique in this.

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I tanked 10-man Naxx crittable with 0 epics. I don't think there's a huge problem. Right now I can have either my dodge trinket, IBF (50% reduced damage), or unbreakable armor (25% armor and 10% parry) up 100% of the time.

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Q u o t e:
I think DKs may end up stacking a lot of dodge and parry just because they can't benefit from block percent or block value. They aren't designed to be avoidance tanks though -- they do have a lot of armor and some very strong active abilities for mitigation.

DKs may have a harder time hitting 540 defense than warriors or paladins just because they don't have the shield slot, which often has defense on it.

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With this comment, are you suggesting that DKs should be using a MH weapon that has mitigating stats, like a warrior tank weapon?

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Q u o t e:


With this comment, are you suggesting that DKs should be using a MH weapon that has mitigating stats, like a warrior tank weapon?

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I don't think it'll be the go-to route, but I don't think it's impossible either.

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Q u o t e:


With this comment, are you suggesting that DKs should be using a MH weapon that has mitigating stats, like a warrior tank weapon?

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if you are having no trouble with threat, i dont see why you shouldnt.

there are a few slow tanking 1handers out there after all, i think theyre made for DKs because slow weapons are bad for prot war dps, idk about pallies though.

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Q u o t e:


if you are having no trouble with threat, i dont see why you shouldnt.

there are a few slow tanking 1handers out there after all, i think theyre made for DKs because slow weapons are bad for prot war dps, idk about pallies though.

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Weapon speed is perfectly irrelevant for paladins.

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Q u o t e:
I think DKs may end up stacking a lot of dodge and parry just because they can't benefit from block percent or block value. They aren't designed to be avoidance tanks though -- they do have a lot of armor and some very strong active abilities for mitigation.

DKs may have a harder time hitting 540 defense than warriors or paladins just because they don't have the shield slot, which often has defense on it.

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Or a weapon slot that has defense on it. Going to love pvping to get my min/max best-in-slot tanking weapon (High dps, stam, and a defensive stat - resilience)

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Q u o t e:
Weapon speed is perfectly irrelevant for paladins.

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Slow weapons are slightly preferable for Paladins in fact; the pallycleave works off of raw weapon damage with no adjustment. Since weapon speed doesn't affect the cooldown, a slower weapon will result in more damage and threat per cooldown, and it procs your seal to boot (meaning you'll get more seal damage from a slower weapon to boot). Paladins should ideally use a slower main-hand.

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Q u o t e:


Slow weapons are slightly preferable for Paladins in fact; the pallycleave works off of raw weapon damage with no adjustment. Since weapon speed doesn't affect the cooldown, a slower weapon will result in more damage and threat per cooldown, and it procs your seal to boot (meaning you'll get more seal damage from a slower weapon to boot). Paladins should ideally use a slower main-hand.

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nope. they work off raw weapon dps. It could be a 1.1 or a 7.2 speed weapons, if they have the same dps they do the same damage.

HotR damage is calculated like this

Take your sheet's DPS value. Remove any dps haste may have added. Now multiply it by 4.
It's even a static hit...the damage never changes unless it crits


Also, SoV is the desirable seal now, it really trumps SoR by far, and SoV's on-hit damage on a slow weapon rarely goes past...6 damage. Which is 1 or 2 damage more than on a fast weapon.

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Q u o t e:


Slow weapons are slightly preferable for Paladins in fact; the pallycleave works off of raw weapon damage with no adjustment. Since weapon speed doesn't affect the cooldown, a slower weapon will result in more damage and threat per cooldown, and it procs your seal to boot (meaning you'll get more seal damage from a slower weapon to boot). Paladins should ideally use a slower main-hand.

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No, the "pallycleave" works off weapon DPS and was made to ignore weapon speed. It used to work the way you described, however.

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Q u o t e:


No, the "pallycleave" works off weapon DPS and was made to ignore weapon speed. It used to work the way you described, however.

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Is that change recent? Because in beta I swear to God and all his angels what I describe above was the precise mechanic.

I'm happy to be wrong, of course, but I wasn't intending to talk out my butt and it wasn't that long ago that I tested it.

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Q u o t e:


Is that change recent? Because in beta I swear to God and all his angels what I describe above was the precise mechanic.

I'm happy to be wrong, of course, but I wasn't intending to talk out my butt and it wasn't that long ago that I tested it.

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It became that way about a month before the beta ended(was already like that when the ptr was up)

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Q u o t e:


Or a weapon slot that has defense on it. Going to love pvping to get my min/max best-in-slot tanking weapon (High dps, stam, and a defensive stat - resilience)

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It'd be hilarious if one of you went for Earthwarden.