I see a few DKs here complaining about the cap, yet they have little or no tradeskills.....

Go pick up Blacksmithing to give yourself two EXTRA gem slots for your gloves and braces (plus you'll be able to make the item to add the slot to your belt).

And/or pick up Jewelcrafting to make the BOP Defense trinkets and gems.

Another alternative might be to Create Sigils and Librams with lots of Defense rating on them.

I am currently get 108 defense rating from my weapon, shield and ranged slot. Paladins can use my weapon and shield, giving them roughly 87 of that 108 defense rating but they're still stuffed in the ranged slot dept.

A libram with ~25 defense rating and a sigil with ~100 defense rating - or some amount of resilience - wouldn't go astray. Let's pretend the gun doesn't also have a silly amount of stamina.

This item - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39292 - proves that you can have 84 defense rating on an ilvl 200 epic drop in Naxxramas. Clone that into a Sigil, take the use off it, put it on a badge vendor somewhere if you must. It would go a long way.

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Q u o t e:
1. Druids are uncrittable through talents, they don't have any problems with it :P

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I know, I have a druid. I'm not suggesting a 6% uncrittable talent, but a small portion of that doesn't sound like a terrible idea in order to overcome two less equipment slots compared to other tanks.

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Q u o t e:
2. Yeah, tier gear has lower defense, but that's why you swap out some stam/avoidance gems/enchants for defense ones. It's not that difficult to maintain 540 defense, even if I removed my sword/shield I could remain above 540 simply by regemming a few pieces of my nax10 gear.

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I'd imagine almost every tank would have to do this to an extent, anyways. But there's still an issue that tanking itemization is different to DK's compared to paladins and warriors. Since your weapon and shield slot will contain defense, you're able to enchant and gem for a bit more stamina or avoidance or whatever happens to float your boat. Two of our equipment slots are devoted to DPS, regardless of what role we're in and the defensive stats needed to make up the difference are not in our talents. So where should they come from?

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Q u o t e:
3. You'd all cry your forced to spend thousands of gold for the matts and no one else has to, completely ignoring the crafted shield a lot of people had to make for the defense value on it in the same mannor. Although I do feel one should be added. That would be a good fix.

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While your other two ideas aren't terrible, this one is. It's not an issue of spending gold on items. It's the issue that two-handed tanking weapons do not exist in the game at all. And the absolute last thing that needs to happen is that two-handed defensive weapons, which will exclusively be for Death Knights, are added to the crafters, boss loot tables and generally implemented into the game. This is exactly what should not happen, and is a major reason why druids are pushing Blizzard to use polearms (more details on feral weapons can be found elsewhere).

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Q u o t e:

Just saying, you knew what the class entailed when you rolled it. I don't know where this is coming from in all honesty. I never expected with my DK alt to have access to tanking weapons and expected to sacrifice a bit of stamina/avoidance on my enchants/gems in order to maintain high defense. If others didn't see this then they missed something pretty big.

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No, actually, I didn't really know too much about the class when I rolled it. I wasn't privileged enough to play the beta and I found a lot of the details to DK gameplay confusing when I was looking into it. Nothing beats first-hand experience, so I rolled one to clear things up. I like him so far, and I like the idea of tanking with a two-handed weapon. However, that still doesn't mean that DK's should have less defensive stats then paladins and warriors. After all, Blizzard has tried pretty hard to allow all classes to fill their rolls as equally well as other classes as possible. Since tanking mitigation stats is a discrepancy, doesn't it make sense to change it? Particularly since all tanks are now capable of doing respectable amounts of DPS, even with tanking weapons, should DK's still get less defensive stats because they're forced to use DPS weapons?

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Q u o t e:


Just saying, you knew what the class entailed when you rolled it. I don't know where this is coming from in all honesty. I never expected with my DK alt to have access to tanking weapons and expected to sacrifice a bit of stamina/avoidance on my enchants/gems in order to maintain high defense. If others didn't see this then they missed something pretty big.

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We have a winner!

There's nothign wrong with DK's gemming and enchanting for pure defense the entire time of the expansion, as long as their avoidance and health mitigation is in line with the other tanks that are gemming for stam/avoidance/defense, i.e. as long as their talents and the other stats on their gear give them these.

If you can prove that having to gem/enchant defense actually hurts you as far as how much damage you take against a raid boss, then you've pointed out an issue, but until then it isn't one. The idea that defense is bad and you're hurting yourself if you gem for it needs to stop.

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Q u o t e:


While your other two ideas aren't terrible, this one is. It's not an issue of spending gold on items. It's the issue that two-handed tanking weapons do not exist in the game at all. And the absolute last thing that needs to happen is that two-handed defensive weapons, which will exclusively be for Death Knights, are added to the crafters, boss loot tables and generally implemented into the game. This is exactly what should not happen, and is a major reason why druids are pushing Blizzard to use polearms (more details on feral weapons can be found elsewhere).

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They could make it upgradeable as you progress, like previous weapons have. That way you don't have to add defense maces to every raid zone, with every DK hoping the one mace will drop, and everyone else sighing when it drops and nobody needs it.

But, we already read "forced this" and "forced that" - I believe this is a misconception; your not forced to do anything. But I do know, they would say "forced" to craft and upgrade such a weapon, and probably some pitch about their freedom of weapon choice being taken from them.

...even though it would fix the other complaints.

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Q u o t e:


Please post on your level 80 death knight whom is defense capped. Personally, I think you're underestimating how hard it is for a death knight to reach this cap which you take for granted.

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<-- Def Capped, (549)

1 crafted epic Titansteel boots (lower def than wrymcrest boots)
1 badge loot belt w/ extra socket.

armory isnt updated, i have the 65def trinket from HoL as of 10 mins ago =P

Also im using 2 lower def rings that have more stam/armor than the other ones i have... and no cloak enchant.

I think a lot of people missed the point. Why you keep mentioning that it's soooo easy to get def capped is beyond me. We realize this.

I'm just curious if blizz intends on bringing out a sigil or adding +def to the +parry runeforge to somehow make up for the 120 extra defense warriors get or the 80 extra defense paladins get from their 1'her, shield, and in the case of a warrior, their range weapon.

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And to all pallies/warriors posting in here...why? We have a good thing going, there is a *slight* issue, and we want to know if it's being looked into.

Don't worry, if you're a good tank, you're not losing your spot to us. If you're horrible, then I guess you'll be rerolling dps or heals.

To the warriors that say this isn't a problem...take your 1'her, shield, and ranged off...what is your defense at? And again, I didn't say it's not possible, but we will be breaking socket bonuses...which isn't fun.

I didn't need the Seal until I got a bunch of upgrades. Aim for items that have sockets and spend some gold on defense enchants. The Teir gear bonus's are very "meh" for DK's, and the offset stuff has alot of defense/dodge.

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Q u o t e:


<-- Def Capped, (549)

1 crafted epic Titansteel boots (lower def than wrymcrest boots)
1 badge loot belt w/ extra socket.

armory isnt updated, i have the 65def trinket from HoL as of 10 mins ago =P

Also im using 2 lower def rings that have more stam/armor than the other ones i have... and no cloak enchant.

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Congrats to you, you now have the one crutch item I've referred to a few times now.

Even with that trinket, you're only at 543 defense, and if you made even one upgrade, such as say, the t7 chest instead of your defense-stacked rep chest, you would fall below the cap again.

As others have said, the issue is not so much that we can't run out and snag up blues everywhere that have as much defense as possible and reach the cap. The problem is we can't upgrade gear past that point and still be at the cap. The trinket allows SOME upgrades, but even then, not many.

Warriors and paladins (I think?) have much the same problem with gear upgrades, but in the end, have more item slots to space this gap out over. We do not.

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Q u o t e:


Congrats to you, you now have the one crutch item I've referred to a few times now.

Even with that trinket, you're only at 543 defense, and if you made even one upgrade, such as say, the t7 chest instead of your defense-stacked rep chest, you would fall below the cap again.

As others have said, the issue is not so much that we can't run out and snag up blues everywhere that have as much defense as possible and reach the cap. The problem is we can't upgrade gear past that point and still be at the cap. The trinket allows SOME upgrades, but even then, not many.

Warriors and paladins (I think?) have much the same problem with gear upgrades, but in the end, have more item slots to space this gap out over. We do not.

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He wouldn't need that if he did the wrist defense enchant, cloak defense enchant, sons of hodir shoulder enchant, or a few other things instead of the enchants he picked. I'm using the trinket, yes, but I could get away with not using it if I gemmed differently.

I would rather NOT see a Sigil just give us straight up defense. It just seems like a bandaid fix that will arise in the future again. Why not have Rune of Swordshattering give us +10% defense rating? If DKs are serious about tanking, they would already have this on their tanking weapon and it'll provide much better leeway for defense issues in the future.

I would rather Sigils/Librams/Totems/Idols simply give us benefits on different spells for different specs than for them to be just a glorified stat stick with no other functionality.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13129078969&sid=1&pageNo=34

Ghostcrawler:

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Q u o t e:
We are adding more Sigils. We will likely add a defense proc sigil too and a two-hander runeforge defense enchant. (Dual wield tanks already have lots of +defense weapons available.)

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Here's hoping it's added to the two-handed parry runeforge. I'd say that'd make a great deal of sense and would resolve this entire thing.

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Q u o t e:

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Q u o t e:
We are adding more Sigils. We will likely add a defense proc sigil too and a two-hander runeforge defense enchant. (Dual wield tanks already have lots of +defense weapons available.)
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A defense PROC sigil... would solve nothing in regards to this defense cap. It would be required for all tanking DKs to use, and would not fix the situation.

However, a defense runeforge enchant has potential, but really, that means making a new one and losing 4% parry rating. To me, it would make a lot more sense to drop the 50% disarm duration reduction on our current enchant and throw defense onto that, instead. Maybe not even a lot.

How often do you really need disarm reduction while tanking, anyway? I don't think it ever belonged.

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Q u o t e:


A defense PROC sigil... would solve nothing in regards to this defense cap. It would be required for all tanking DKs to use, and would not fix the situation.

However, a defense runeforge enchant has potential, but really, that means making a new one and losing 4% parry rating. To me, it would make a lot more sense to drop the 50% disarm duration reduction on our current enchant and throw defense onto that, instead. Maybe not even a lot.

How often do you really need disarm reduction while tanking, anyway? I don't think it ever belonged.

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1% parry is equal to 10 def. Trading 4% parry for 40 defense would be a no-brainer.

Also, it was not hard to cap def in BC because you got 20 def from talents. It is more difficult now but its even harder for deathknights because we lack about 125 easy to get def rating from a MH weapon a shield.

If we had 20 def from talents and 25 from weapon/shield it would be easy to cap.

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Q u o t e:
A defense PROC sigil... would solve nothing in regards to this defense cap. It would be required for all tanking DKs to use, and would not fix the situation.

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This is a good point. Even with a sigil that procced some defense, we'd still need to be at 540 defense without the sigil buff or risk being susceptible to critical strikes. All this does is boost our other avoidance stats mid-fight, which isn't a bad thing.

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Q u o t e:
1% parry is equal to 10 def. Trading 4% parry for 40 defense would be a no-brainer.

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Q u o t e:
Yes. We are probably going to do both. As with everything though, there will be a trade off. If you enchant for defense, you'll be giving up whatever else you could possibly get from the enchant.

The way we designed death knights, they are going to struggle a little more for defense than warriors and paladins. Our goal is not to make gathering defense a non-issue for them. (By contrast it was a goal to make defense a non-issue for druids.) We just think it's a bit too hard at the moment, which is why the sigil and runeforge changes are attractive.

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I don't know why you would assume blizzard would make a runeforge enchant that gives enough defense to make our parry one obsolete. This isn't something that I've ever known them to do, as once they put the effort into coding something like the swordbreaker enchant, they're either going to tweak it until it's viable on its own, or introduce something else that will make you think twice about which one you pick.

They aren't going to make the choice as easy as "Well, I could go for the 4% parry enchant, or I could go for the defense enchant that ALSO gives 2% dodge 2% parry."

But once again, I think taking out the disarm duration reduction and tacking on some extra defense, or -crit% would be a much wiser choice. It doesn't seem like GMs are considering this option, though. It's too simple, too much of a straight buff, rather than forcing us to make a tough choice.