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Q u o t e:
The first example sounds more of a lack of familiarity with the instance than a mechanics problem. Pull back far enough and the fear is a non-issue.

Even in emergencies and you get adds, Empower Runeweapon is there for you. Failing that, we also have Blood Tap to instantly activate a blood rune into a death rune, which will allow you to throw out a Pestilence.


I wont touch your mitigation issues since they are already discussed plenty and are being reworked.

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If Emp Rune Weapon finished cooldowns, sure =P

Pestilence would still be down otherwise =[

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Q u o t e:
My healers never have to drink through the entirety of a heroic, no one ever pulls aggro off me or gets hit save maybe for a rare occasion and only for 1 second, and no one has ever died in that 1 second.

I'm constantly praised nightly for how awesome of a tank I am, most people don't run anything till I log on.

Get better imo.

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Yes you are very cool and win at life because you can play a video game.

No Aoe high threat is not impossible or even all that difficult with concentration and practice. However the way it currently is, its very clunky and awkward and people have the right to make suggestions to help smooth out the rough edges.

The rune system is what makes the DK work for me. If you don't like the CD system then DK is probably not for you as it will not be changing.

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Q u o t e:


Yes you are very cool and win at life because you can play a video game.

No Aoe high threat is not impossible or even all that difficult with concentration and practice. However the way it currently is, its very clunky and awkward and people have the right to make suggestions to help smooth out the rough edges.

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What is your trouble with AE threat? I've never had an issue holding aggro against multiple mobs, assuming an extra pull gets added in.... I have DnD and pestilence, I don't see a situation where they'd both be that far away from cooling even if we do have a pull..... and even then personally ( as unholy ) I have unholy blight and wandering plague to keep them on me.

to the OP: Maybe you could consider SAVING howling blast for when you actually need it =/

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Q u o t e:


What is your trouble with AE threat? I've never had an issue holding aggro against multiple mobs, assuming an extra pull gets added in.... I have DnD and pestilence, I don't see a situation where they'd both be that far away from cooling even if we do have a pull..... and even then personally ( as unholy ) I have unholy blight and wandering plague to keep them on me.

to the OP: Maybe you could consider SAVING howling blast for when you actually need it =/

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Zero trouble w/ overall aoe threat, but much more trouble with actual front loading threat. My problem is (not in its execution, just in theory) is the fact aoe is a multi-step process and reliant pretty much 2 separate cooldowns (runes + ability). Pestilence really does not give that much threat and DnD is expensive and really handcuffs my first attack rotation. Overall it's a pretty minor gripe for me, mostly i just feel its an awkward mechanic in a really great rune system and can see ways for it to be smoothed out a little.

For all you "lawl i can do it l2p people," I agree, again its far from impossible to hold aoe threat, we have nowhere near the handicap a druid does at the moment and we do have strong tools for area damage. But I feel there's a little room for improvement w/o making the class overpowered.

I also wouldn't mind having an Runic power - AoE ability outside of the unholy tree, but i think that's a different discussion entirely (Agian, not because we NEED it, but spamming FS/DC/RS agianst 5+ mobs just feels.....wimpy?) >.>

As for a reply to the initial post, I also feel the CD struggle, but we do have rune tap and empower rune blade for times like those. I will say frost is a little inferior for AOE tanking than Unholy. Unholy Blight can snag up a few mobs if they are not being attacked initially. The only real issue I have found is single target threat on all DK specs. Now I know what is gonna happen, I am gonna get flamed saying I cant do enough threat as Unholy and I should go frost, but I have tanked almost all of the content in Wrath as frost and unholy and both lack the threat generation when you have a mage pushing 5k dps breathing down your neck. Warriors and pallys have no issue with this it seems, so I honestly think that the CD issue is lower on the totem poll than threat. However, I am seeing some good blue post on making mitigation more passive than CD based, so there is a plus. So maybe they will take a serious look into threat. Just my two cents.

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Q u o t e:
one of the things that comes up a lot is removing the cooldown from Pestilence.

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YES!

there are definitely fights where i struggled at first to the cooldown 'woe' if you want to call it such. my first example is offtanking Noth. i personally would probably be happy to even see the pestilence cooldown dropped in half to 5seconds.

though i do agree with GC that timing is a key factor to playing the class, and playing it well. i wouldn't be nearly as interested in it without that.

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Q u o t e:
Death knights are a cooldown-based class. They can't count on abilities being there and ready to the same extent other classes are. In return though, they have an unlimited resource that neither goes away over time (mana) or is dependent on doing damage or taking damage (rage). While a DK may struggle a little more when things get out of control (because of cooldowns) they are also fantastic in other situations -- you can actually battle rez a fallen DK tank and have them get back in the fray because they don't need to build up rage or mana first.

The rune system definitely has some strengths and weaknesses and that is by design so that the DK actually feels like a different class using different mechanics. Cooldowns won't appeal to everyone, just as drinking to restore mana doesn't appeal to everyone.

Now, that said, we do hope to be able to post some more definitive changes to DKs soon (putting numbers on the rune strike nerf and all that) and one of the things that comes up a lot is removing the cooldown from Pestilence.

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I love the idea of having pestilance without a cooldown. All the cooldown does is prevent us from adapting when things go wrong. The VB/UA/BS cost of 1 rune isn't bad, because blood tap sets things straight when you need it. Any chance of reducing the CD on Howling Blast too? It's just obnoxious having to rely on Deathchill to put out respectable AoE threat.

I think we all understand what you're saying about class differentiation but for tanking purposes rage is a superior power gain mechanism. Rage is a positive feedback where the more damage you take the more damage and threat you can deal. This also scales perfectly with gear;
as the warrior or druid's autoattack damage and dodge increases, their rage gain increases as well, allowing them to use more abilities. Warrior and druid tanks are largely constrained by GCDs, and use heroic strike/maul to dump extra rage.

Now of course DKs are also heavily constrained by GCDs, just because we have two different power pools, a million abilities to spend on them, and the persistent requirement to keep up two (or three) diseases to maintain damage and threat. The key difference here is that our power gain doesn't improve with gear. Much like rogues, as we upgrade from greens to blues and epics, our runes don't refresh faster and we don't gain more runic power from ability usage. That hasn't proven to be a problem in current content, though.

DK tanks' power mechanism can be fairly accurately compared to paladins. Both are inexhaustible renewable resources. Ours renews automatically, theirs is filled via spiritual attunement, but the effect is the same. So while it may be apples/oranges to compare DK tanks' use of cooldowns to warriors or druids, I feel we can be somewhat accurately compared to paladin tanks.

My concern is not that our abilities are subject to cooldowns but that they're subject to two cooldowns-- those inherent on the ability itself and the resources to cast it. That's what's annoying.

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Q u o t e:


Ooooh, I get it now, Death Knights were designed to have second-rate avoidance and mitigation so they could be battle rezzed without buffs and really be able to shine. I have finally seen the light.

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Well, it seems they were designed to be the perfect OT. Consider Death Knights to be the trusty side kick of Paladin, Warrior and Druid. ^.*

Yeah, battle-rezzing a tank is haxxors. Tanks with 0 threat are guaranteed to turn the tide.

While I'm sure the devs find your threatening to quit a compelling argument and are grateful for the timely reminder that PvP exists too, this is a threat about PvE tanking.

Haven't played a DK tank yet at 80, but I feel like alot of the issues you mention here are common to DK tanks and bears. I'm pretty sure that block rating is presenting a large problem to the developers currently, in that there is really no way to balance trash in a way that will be fair to those blocking classes (who take so much less damage from trash hits) and druids/DKs.

Personally I'd like to see some fix come from up on high that allows druids and DKs to in some way make use of parry (wait can DKs already parry?) and block rating, and allow better mitigation mainly for trash mobs. I have no idea what this change would look like, but I'd like to see it. The nerf to +armor items in the next patch is going to hit hard, and since it is intended to normalize gear, this change would be in order. As it stands, the +armor change will make most gear alot less uber to bears and DKs, but will not give viable alternatives, since so many rings/cloaks/trinks that don't contain +armor also contain +block or +parry, and also +defense (which I know is somewhat useful to a DK, but not to a bear).

These gear issues are going to loom large as soon as the patch hits nerfing +armor, I just hope the devs don't take too long to fix them.