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Q u o t e:
We're looking at the issue since players have brought it up. However, we are not hearing widespread feedback from across the board that DKs are struggling to maintain single-target threat. That is what makes me wonder if something else is going on, like it only occurs with some gear choices for example.

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DK who get BoSanc dont complain.

DK who dont get it do complain.


thats the trend i see.

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Q u o t e:
I can't tank the drakes while attempting to do 3d or even 2 drakes.
Simply for the fact that my TPS can't keep up with the dps while avoiding lava walls, and Shad's, lets roam around the battle field tricks.
We've had to switch Sarth tanks for this reason.

At least tanking Sarth for 3 minutes ahead of the DPS I can keep up...

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Though this doesn't match perfectly with another point I'd like to make, it is very relavent that people understand that even though we can tank certain encounters with enough Rogues, Hunters and DPS threat dropping abilities, the closer threat race makes people / raids / raid leaders prefer a tank that is more stable.

Just like when Holy Paladin got Beacon of Light so they wouldn't be left out of Heroic Magister's Terrace, DK's need more threat so we're not excluded from tanking raid bosses.

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Q u o t e:
DK who get BoSanc dont complain.

DK who dont get it do complain.


thats the trend i see.

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I wonder if rogues factor in as well. In 25 mans, you're pretty much guarenteed to have some rogues dumping threat to you, no?

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Q u o t e:


DK who get BoSanc dont complain.

DK who dont get it do complain.


thats the trend i see.

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I get BoSanc regularly. Though it does make a big difference, it's not solving the problem. Even if it was, it's unacceptable for us to be crutched by another classes buff.

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Q u o t e:


I get BoSanc regularly. Though it does make a big difference, it's not solving the problem. Even if it was, it's unacceptable for us to be crutched by another classes buff.

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oh im not saying it should be that way, im just saying thats the trend i see.

you have like 2 groups of DK. ones who get BoSanc all the time and think their threat is fine. then you have the ones who never get BoSanc and think their threat sucks.



i was just more pointing out that this one buff has such a huge impact on the class, which is probably a large factor in why the complaints arnt universal.

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Q u o t e:


That is plain wrong. Druids and Warriors get as much of a benefit from BoSanc as we do.

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this is not quite true.

We get far more threat from power gains than druids/warriors get from rage gains.

I do agree that single target threat is severely lacking. Which surprises me, considering that DK is by far the hardest tank class to play.

And GC, I suspect that you're not seeing widespread complaints about DK threat YET, for the same reason the OP mentioned. Most guilds don't have DPSers yet that are pushing the threat envelope. The guilds that have top DPSers, are finding that other tanks are a better choice.

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Q u o t e:
We're looking at the issue since players have brought it up. However, we are not hearing widespread feedback from across the board that DKs are struggling to maintain single-target threat. That is what makes me wonder if something else is going on, like it only occurs with some gear choices for example.

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Ghost, we are having threat issues.

I cannot generate as much threat as an comprably geared Warrior, Druid or Paladin. When I was Blood specced (50/5/16), I was a little better. I could keep up on most bosses. With this Unholy spec, my threat seems unnaturally low. 3.5-4K TPS is about all I can manage at the beginning. After a couple of cycles, I'm usually well ahead of the DPS, so its not a huge issue. However, the gap has been closing in the past few weeks. I'm starting to notice our better DPs players staying at 85% or more of my threat. There are times they are catching up to me. I never see this with the other tanks. They always stay comfortably ahead of everyone.

I can keep up with the warriors for awhile, but once he hits infinite rage, I start falling behind. Our DPS usually hovers around 75-80% threat. Our better geared warrior usually hovers around 5.5-6K TPS.

I can't keep up with a prot pally, but I'm willing to attribute that to the fact that Naxx is all undead. He also benefits from JoL on high raid damage fights, so I can't accurately guage his individual threat. He's usually in the 5.5-6K threat range, but he's getting better as his gear becomes more epic.

Our feral druid is scary with his threat output. He's easily pushing 6-7K TPS and leaves the DPS back at 50% or lower threat. Since he doesn't need any defense to be uncrittable, he's able to stack agility, strength and AP on his gear. He can grab expertise and hit because it is plentiful on leather gear. I can't compete with that kind of threat output. Combined with his significantly better survivability (hopefully 3.0.8 fixes this), he is a much better choice to tank almost anything over me.

Like I said, I didn't notice this as much when I was Blood specced. I think I'll try Frost this week and see how it goes. I'm hoping for more snap aggro with Rime+HB at the beginning of a fight.

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Q u o t e:
I can't tank the drakes while attempting to do 3d or even 2 drakes.
Simply for the fact that my TPS can't keep up with the dps while avoiding lava walls, and Shad's, lets roam around the battle field tricks.
We've had to switch Sarth tanks for this reason.

At least tanking Sarth for 3 minutes ahead of the DPS I can keep up...

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Lucky, I got demoted to whelp boy.

Also because the prot pally fails at whelps... Is that in the script?

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Q u o t e:
DK who get BoSanc dont complain.

DK who dont get it do complain.


thats the trend i see.

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DKs who get BoSanc half the time complain.

DKs who's dps aren't geared don't complain full stop.

DKs who don't have Sanc with geared dps are too busy rocking back and forwards in the fetal position or offtanking.

GC, you're not getting talk about DK single-target threat issues 'across the board', because it's only really turns into an issue when the dps starts to scale up from 25 man gear. Prior to that, we've got enough of a lead, but eventually they catch up. And our threat just doesn't scale at the same rate as the other tanks.

1. We are horribly reliant on Blessing of Sanc for decent threat in well geared raids. Demanding that a prot pally accompany every DK tank so that that DK may be viable is a tall ask.

2. All tanking classes have fights where their threat gen is less than optimal, due to the fight mechanics. But our less-than-optimal situation (not being able to rune strike often due to a caster/slow swinging boss) harms our threat far more than other tank's less-than-optimal situations. Rune strike is just that important.

3. Our single-target threat scaling (with the currently available tanking gear) is just plain inferior to other tanks.

Burst threat? Meh. I'm quite happy to see difficulties there as part of the class, everyone has a weakness, and it's really not that bad if you stay ready for sudden changes. But sustained single-target threat cannot be weak if we are to be viable tanks through high-end content. Please consider a threat boost to heart strike/obliterate/scourge strike while in frost presence.

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Q u o t e:

DKs who don't have Sanc with geared dps are too busy rocking back and forwards in the fetal position or offtanking.

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Haha, nice.

It's true though. I've taken the liberty of delegating myself to an OT. It's a raid liability for me to threat cap our DPS.

25 man raid.

BoSanc.

HaT stacking.

A couple hunters.


No threat problems o.o

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Q u o t e:
Here's my feedback on the threat problems I had and how I managed to overcome them.

When I first started raids, I went into it with something like 2000 AP, ~150 hit, and around 8 expertise. I had a titansteel destroyer and the crappy starter sigil. I had massive problems with threat when I went from heroics to raids: I couldn't even consistantly break 2k TPS on the 4 Horsemen because we didn't have armor reductions in the raid and on my side of the fight. My threat on most other bosses would hover in the 2000-2300 range as well, but not having an armor reduction was significantly hurting my threat output.

Doing 25-mans, my threat was fine. At the time, I was able to hit 4000+ tps on mobs thanks to the sunders, earth and moon/Curse of Elements debuffs, and Misery. Once all the debuffs were up and in place my threat was awesome and everything was fine, I could hold aggro sufficiently that the DPS could nuke the bosses with no concern.

The solution to my threat problems was several parts:
1. Get hit capped. Missed attacks break your death runes, ruining your rotations/priority and overall limiting your dps/threat
2. Get expertise capped. I'm talking about 26 expertise, the point where the mob no longer dodges attacks. This winds up being doubly good because it also reduces the chance you're parried, helping a little with mitigation in the process.
3. Get a better weapon. I got an Inevitable Defeat to drop
4. Get the Obliterate/Scourge Strike sigil.

At first, I got #1 and #2 and it helped quite a bit, I was able to get up around 2500 more consistantly, but I switched to Unholy for the magic damage that wasn't mitigated by armor. Then I finally got the weapon and sigil in the same night, and now I'm able to comfortably hit 3500-4000 in 10-man raids, more than enough to deal with some of the burst streaks my dps goes on.

The problem with DKs is the steep requirements, which hopefully the next patch will work to remedy. Alot of DKs already report problems with just getting defense capped, and all that does is prevent mobs from crushing you into a fine red mist. Then, once you manage to get defense capped, you have to start working on expertise and hit so that you can actually generate the threat required to hold onto mobs. Finally, there's that sigil slot that does almost nothing for unholy and frost specced tanks until you're lucky enough to get carried through to Heigan, and that represents a massive, must-have upgrade for threat. Hopefully the new Icy Touch defense sigil goes even further to opening up our gear for more stat flexibility, and this won't be as much of an issue.

TL;dr summary:
Threat is terrible at entry levels because our gear is so defense-heavy that there's no room for anything else. It starts to even out later on once we get some really awesome pieces and can afford to put threat stats in, but then we just start to catch up to the other tanks. We'd like to start out closer to the other tanks on the low-end of the gear spectrum, and this problem only becomes apparent when we're dealing with raid bosses.

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This is completely incorrect for multiple reasons.

1. Naxx drops frequently have less defense than quest/reputation blues. I was trapped into blues until I got the pieces to slap defense gems everywhere, and I still have to have my breastplate enchanted with 22 defense.

2. With Death's Bite, being overcapped on hit and with 24 Expertise, I was still not coming close to the threat produced by our undergeared druid tank. When this druid stacks frost resist gear gemmed for stamina, she ends up with 8k more hit points than me, thousands more armor than me, and STILL produces enough threat to let the dps go all out. Our other tanks have SURPLUS aggro generation.

We don't run with an enhancement shaman OR a prot paladin.

There is a point where this stops being an L2P issue and starts being a class design issue. Death Knights are NOT an easy class to tank with. This is a class that does require skill to play well. That being said, having the gear and playing right does not guarantee success with aggro generation and right now, that is a very major issue.

I would like to concur this fact. The fact that we need to get hit and expertise capped in order to do even halfway passable raid-threat is pretty silly... especially given the fact that we have many other things to balance. Think of it this way...

The tanking-stance threat modifier of DKs, Warriors, and Druids is 2.0735. But, Warriors and Druids have spammable skills with innate threat.

Now, both DKs and Paladins don't have innate (single-target) threat talents... but, the threat modifier of a Paladin is 2.717, over 1/3rd higher than the DK. Now, the DK has Death and Decay... but that is a long-cooldown, AoE spell, and the talent to lower that cooldown is bugged to the point where any raiding DK can't take it or else lose the ability to tank on Sartharion+drakes.

Now, there have been a lot of great solutions. "Just use Death and Decay" isn't one, or at least, isn't a reasonable one. Either our innate threat modifier should be brought closer in line with Paladins (although we do more DPS than a Protection Paladin, so that needs to be taken into account), or we need to get some way to do enough DPS under that threat modifier to compete.

But we do not scale right now. I started off Naxx10 doing about 1000 unbuffed DPS, and now after being in mostly Naxx25 tanking gear, I do about 1100 unbuffed DPS. Compare this to DPS that walks in doing 1600 and walks out doing 3000 (3000 - 5500 buffed), and the scaling issues become clear. But I'm pretty disappointed that I literally can not tank Malygos because I can't get enough threat. I can barely tank Sapphiron, but my DPS is capped nearly the whole fight... don't even get me started about Kel'Thuzad. Sure, I can pull 5500 TPS on Patchwerk... but part of that is from Hateful itself, and the rest of it is from dodging and parrying every second or two.

In a maximum-threat gearset., a maximum-threat tanking spec (within reason), according to my spreadsheet numbers we cap out at around 4800 average raid-buffed TPS, and can get up to 5000 if we wear some DPS gear. Paladins pull that in Blues. Warriors can get that very reasonably with 10man gear. Druids can do it naked. Please don't let this only become an issue after we see an Ulduar mob with an enrage timer that we just can not make, since we can't give the DPS a high enough ceiling. We're not asking for the world... a modest boost is enough.

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Q u o t e:
We're looking at the issue since players have brought it up. However, we are not hearing widespread feedback from across the board that DKs are struggling to maintain single-target threat. That is what makes me wonder if something else is going on, like it only occurs with some gear choices for example.

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Heres one issue:

Rune Strike.

Something like Patchwerk its up all the time I can put out like 7k+ tps (I can't remember off hand), something like Malygos or Sapp or anything else that hits like molasses and doesn't 'proc' Rune Strike and our threat struggles. Many DK's try and compensate this by using DnD whenever it is up. But doing that all the time feels clunky, and on single target mobs feels like a waste. Rune Strike needs to change somehow, I don't know how but I'm sure I could spit out some ideas. Perhaps it could increase the threat on the next melee attack or two, that isn't Rune Strike (or auto attack). That would increase over all threat and not increase damage.

I'll be watching my threat numbers a bit more closely this week. From my observations so far, my threat isn't so low that its preventing me tanking any encounters. In encounters like Patchwerk which put a spotlight on maximum DPS however, I have to work pretty hard to avoid any mistakes which could reduce my threat (ie hitting the right ability at the exact moment the runes are ready). On those fights, you really notice every single miss, dodge and parry and it's focused my attention heavily on gearing for hit and expertise as well as purely defensive stats.

Another issue which was mentioned:

Our two-piece set bonus on our tanking gear is completely worthless.

Plague Strike is the worst of the worst when it comes to our instant abilities. The Dual Wield builds designed around Howling Blast having no cooldown remove it from their rotations entirely. A 30% weapon damage attack plus 113 that crits is still 60% of weapon damage plus 226.

Glancing at a WWS for a 25-man Naxx run, here was how Plague Strike stood up.

Plague Strike accounted for 150k damage out of 9.9 million. Just over 1.5% of the total. The average PS damage was 701... this included Thaddius. The average white melee swing was 1769 damage. I used PS 130 times while I had 651 white swings. Using Plague Strike was less added damage than having a Windfury Totem. Blood Plague was 499k damage, making the disease itself 3x more damaging than the attack which applies it.

Contrast this with Icy Touch: Icy Touch did 445k damage, for a convenient 4.5% of total. The average damage was 1713. Frost Fever did 638k for almost 6.5%.

Conclusion: The difference that the 2-piece set bonus makes is negligible for tanks.

Suggestion: Consider an increase in the damage of a different ability. Increasing the damage or aggro dealt by diseases or disease-applying abilities in general might not be amiss. Hell, just apply it across the board to non-physical damage. It is not out of line to have this bonus be good. The DPS set offers 5% crit chance to an ability with high crit chance and for Frost spec, a 245% crit damage multiplier.

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Q u o t e:
If I am summarizing this thread, it appears most of the concern is about single-target threat vs. well-geared dps, especially against slow-swinging or magic-using bosses who don't proc Rune Strike as often. Groups with reliable BoSanc don't notice the problem as much.

I would compare yourself to warriors more than paladins, since the next patch removes the threat of Light, which sometimes grants paladins crazy numbers.

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I think this is the basic gist of it, yeah. I have zero complaints regarding our AE aggro.

I tend to compare DK's to warriors more than any other tank.

Our "high threat" abilities after 3.0.8 will consist of a VERY high cost AE and a reactive "next melee" ability. Our damage output is not high enough to keep pace with lower damage tanks with higher aggro abilities.

I would agree with that GC, atleast from my standpoint.

My guild mainly runs 10 mans and 25 man OS/Vault. We're just starting to get into 25 man naxx (two wings cleared our first night too, woot!)

I have not had much trouble as of yet. Having Blessing of Sanc really ups my threat though, and I have noticed some dps starting to creep up a little more, especially this ret pally as he starts to get more geared.

The only thing I sometimes have trouble with is right as a boss is pulled, I need to get IT and PS up before I can start in on my heavier attacks, which means theres a small period where DPS sometimes pull aggro for a second or two. This is probably just my DPS just not waiting for me to establish aggro though :P as opposed to a real DK problem.

I will say on fast swinging fights, like patchwerk, my threat is great. If i'm the hateful tank (which I usually am since i have the largest HP of the tanks in my guild) I have to hold back most of the fight so as to not pull off the MT.

My suggestion to help our threat go a little higher would be to add a "high threat" component to one or more of our abilitys