I don't expect any of these to go live or anything, but I am bored, thus I make a post.

In General
Frost Presence
Total stamina increased by 8%.
Armor contribution from cloth, leather, mail and plate items increased by 60%.
Damage taken reduced by 5%.
Although currently 10% health is too much and scales too well, the 6% stamina on the PTR puts us behind the other tanks. By bumping it up 2% should be enough to put us even with the other tanks, although not so much as to put us ahead. And by other tanks, I exclude druids, for obvious reasons.

In Blood
Scent of Blood
You have a 15% chance after dodging, parrying or taking direct damage to gain the Scent of Blood effect, causing your next 1/2/3 melee hits to generate 5 runic power. In addition, increases your stamina by 1/2/3%.
As you'll see below, the stamina bonus was removed from Veteran of the Third War and moved here, to make it accessible to every Frost and Unholy. Aside from the base 5/8/5 and thanks to the past Blessing of Sanc nerf, Scent of Blood is the talent closest to being picked up by every spec. As well, it is not one in dps builds and what have you, so wouldn't interfere there with that balancing act. With the high importance of max health and effective health, for all DK tank specs to be equal, they need to be even in this department.

Veteran of the Third War
Increases your total Strength and healing received by 2/4/6%, and your expertise by 2/4/6.
Stamina bonus removed for aforementioned reasons. The healing modifier gives Blood a passive tanking bonus, without being so strong as to be mandatory for any DK tank. Thanks to WotN and Spell Deflection, blood already deals best with unexpected burst (and expected burst revolves around cooldowns which are balanced by details below), and to give them another EH modifier would be too much. If they are supposed to have the whole self healing/increased healing feel, between this, DS, and VB, you have it, without upsetting balance.

Vampiric Blood
Rune cost removed.
Cooldowns need to be able to be used on the fly. That is why they are off the GCD. A resource cost works against that, and causes you to either risk not having a rune up when needed, or severely gimping your threat 'just in case'.

In Frost
Anticipation
Increases your armor value from items by 3/6/9/12/15% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 6/12/18/24/30%.
Removes the current nerf which is in place on the PTRs. Our armor is approximately ~1000-1200 ahead of warriors/paladins, which math has shown to be almost exactly the amount we need to offset the lack of block. Nerfing it makes no sense.

Unbreakable Armor
Rune cost removed.
Increases your armor by 25% and your total strength by 25% while reducing damage from all attacks by [1000 + 15 * ((Defense - (Level*5)]. Lasts 20 seconds.
Rune cost removed for aforementioned reasons. The old UA had two issues; 1) You could get armor capped, thus causing it to lose value and 2) It did not affect magic damage. The first issue is solved by the past 80->60% frost presence nerf in combination with the Inspiration change. The second matter is solved by the variation of the current UA - except instead of scaling it with armor, it scales it with defense, thus synergizing with IBF (and frost getting an increased uptime on IBF) and tanking gear as a whole, without interfering with PvP.

In Unholy.
Magic Suppression
You take 2/4/6% less damage from all magic. In addition, your Anti-Magic Shell reduces physical damage taken by 5/10/15%.
The idea here is not to give Unholy another cooldown. 15% is too little to be effective, anyways. The idea is to give it an ability which causes it to not fall behind on magic-light fights. In an encounter with heavy magic damage, Unholy is fine due to the 6% reduced magic damage alone, but on physical? They need something, and this is it. On a primarily-physical fight, you don't need to save AMS for any large burst, and as such can use it regularly almost whenever it is off cooldown. This would amount to 1.66% physical damage reduction average over time, a bit worse than Improved Frost Presence, but that is offset due to being able to use it on command. It has a similar relationship to WotN. However on a primarily-magical fight, you are going to use AMS when you have to use it anyways, thus the bonus hardly matters as much. And besides, with the cap on AMS, the current secondary affect of Magic Suppression is quite weak.

Bone Shield
Rune cost removed. Now off the GCD.
Rune cost removed for aforementioned reasons. Bone Shield is one of the only cooldowns on the GCD, which is quite illogical. Back when BS was 40%, perhaps this was balanced, but nowadays there is no need, and it hurts Bone Shield's effectiveness.

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(Summary Below)

The end result?
All DK tanks get equal stamina, and the proper amount of stamina to stay even with Warriors/Paladins.
All DK tanks get equal armor, and the proper amount of armor to make up for the lack of a Warrior's/Paladin's block.
All DK tanks get equivalent cooldowns to the other trees, cooldowns which are balanced with one another, and cooldowns which don't have the frustrating resource requirement other class cooldowns lack.

The passives?
Blood: Will of the Necropolis, 6% Healing Received, Spell Deflection.
Frost: 2% damage reduction, 3% avoidance, Acclimation.
Unholy: 6% magic damage reduction, 15% damage reduction on AMS, AMZ.

The first two of each list are enough to differentiate the trees without making any which one above and beyond superior to the others. The last item on each list is of situational use, and it's value varies vastly from fight to fight.

There are other things about DK's which could/need to be changed, however these changes balance tank-centric matters without interfering with PvP/Dps.

There is nothing radical here, nothing new or exciting or vastly different. There is no need for such a thing. Most of it is just number tweaking, talent swapping, and the like.

Anyways, just my bored thoughts!

These seem like pretty well thought out ideas. I like the improvement to unbreakable armour (I have a feeling shield block might go the direction of capped % reduction with a scaling block value anyways...).

The 15% reduction on anti-magic zone doesn't seem to fit with the others though. Perhaps unholy should get an additional tanking talent similar to its counterparts in the other trees such as will of the necropolis/veteran of the third war or frigid deathplate/might of mograine/improved frost presence. Unholy could really use a talent that provides some passive tanking bonuses beyond magic mitigation.

Wow... this is probably the best thought out changes I've seen for a very long time. Unfortunately, since it's not just a series of nerfs, this thread will be derailed almost instantly by people complaining that we've been OP since launch so it's time for us to be bottom of the barrel :(

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Q u o t e:
The 15% reduction on anti-magic zone doesn't seem to fit with the others though. Perhaps unholy should get an additional tanking talent similar to its counterparts in the other trees such as will of the necropolis/veteran of the third war or frigid deathplate/might of mograine/improved frost presence. Unholy could really use a talent that provides some passive tanking bonuses beyond magic mitigation.

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It's on AMS, not AMZ. And, yeah, a flat out passive would be preferrable, but there isn't much else you can give them that one of the other trees doesn't already have. Mitigation? Avoidance? Increased healing? All done. You can't really do increased health. This was the closest I could think of. It's nearly passive, since, as explained, you can pop it on whim in a Vexav like fight, but isn't too strong on something like Sartharion.

Ams and Amz aren't passives, Unholy needs a passive phsyical mitigation talent. Possibly along the lines of an agility stamina buff, why does Unholy have to spec so deep into blood, to pick up a little extra hp.

An agility and stamina talent won't beef up UH pvp, by much if at all, but would help with tanking. Let's face it UH tanking has been nerfed, mostly because of pvp. If UH were to get talents simular to the other specs, might make it OP in pvp.

So go the route that will have the least impact on pvp.

If you read my post in its entirety, you would have seen stamina being handled =p.

Giving agility is no different than frigid dreadplate. It would either be the same, flat our superior, or flat out inferior. This was something different. And, yes, I get AMS isn't passive. I never said it was. All I said that on a fight without heavy magic burst/erratic magic debuffs, there is little reason to not use it every time the cooldown is up (if for the free RP if nothing else), and thus against purely physical fights, it is the closest you can get to passive without being passive, which makes it too similar.

Nothing can ever be 100% the same between specs. Or between classes. This is simply to narrow the gap(s) to playstyle, preference, and fight style (although each spec would have a certain type of fight it is strongest against, it wouldn't be at a noticeable disadvantage in others).

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Q u o t e:
It isn't a goal that all DK tanks have the same Stamina or the same Stamina as the other tank classes. We want the Frost vs. Blood choice to actually be an interesting one and not just a cosmetic one.

Likewise, we want the raid to react a little differently if a DK is tanking instead of a Feral druid. We want the choice of class you pick as a tank to be more than just art.

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The problem with this is dualspec.

If Frost>Blood sometimes and Blood>Frost sometimes and the difference is significant, this won't give DK tanks a choice; it will just make Frost/Blood the required dualspec.

Some of us prefer to tank as Unholy. Unholy needs something, in between cds, during aoe pulls that makes Bone shield completely useless. Since the beginning that has always been a factor in Unholy tanking, until the armor buff.

Adding agility will beef up Unholy armor, for aoe packs, making it less vunerable in aoe, and beef up avoidance a little to aid with Bone shield. It would be slightly different than frigid dreadplate, because of the armor gained from it.

I really like these ideas, they are much more even handed than the current proposed changes.

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Q u o t e:
It isn't a goal that all DK tanks have the same Stamina or the same Stamina as the other tank classes. We want the Frost vs. Blood choice to actually be an interesting one and not just a cosmetic one.

Likewise, we want the raid to react a little differently if a DK is tanking instead of a Feral druid. We want the choice of class you pick as a tank to be more than just art.

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just keeping my mouth shut on this one..

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Q u o t e:
It isn't a goal that all DK tanks have the same Stamina or the same Stamina as the other tank classes. We want the Frost vs. Blood choice to actually be an interesting one and not just a cosmetic one.

Likewise, we want the raid to react a little differently if a DK is tanking instead of a Feral druid. We want the choice of class you pick as a tank to be more than just art.

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So, DKs being worse is flavor?

I can understand frost having avoidance over, say, stamina...But all 3 DK specs will be behind other tanks by every metric we have to measure a tank in.

"How a tank feels to heal"...Should not equate to "That tank sucks to heal, the other is much easier".

Warriors can tell you what I'm talking about.

Unless "React" means "Your raid has to play better"...Which is certainly the case now, and will be post 3.2....You don't have enough "knobs" for tanking to be going down this road, sorry GC.

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Q u o t e:
It isn't a goal that all DK tanks have the same Stamina or the same Stamina as the other tank classes. We want the Frost vs. Blood choice to actually be an interesting one and not just a cosmetic one.

Likewise, we want the raid to react a little differently if a DK is tanking instead of a Feral druid. We want the choice of class you pick as a tank to be more than just art.

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And just what is the goal?

It sure is going to 'feel' different for the healers if a 3.2 DK is tanking vs a 3.2 Druid, assuming equal gear/skill.

I'm trying very hard not to take your quote of context, but I think we would all appreciate some dev input/thoughts in the 2 'big' math threads - or is everything going to be done on the PTR forum?

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Q u o t e:
It isn't a goal that all DK tanks have the same Stamina or the same Stamina as the other tank classes. We want the Frost vs. Blood choice to actually be an interesting one and not just a cosmetic one.

Likewise, we want the raid to react a little differently if a DK is tanking instead of a Feral druid. We want the choice of class you pick as a tank to be more than just art.

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Are you saying it's ok for one tank to take, on average, 30% less physical damage from a boss because it makes them feel different to heal?

Frost vs. Blood? Frost doesn't have a real cooldown. That's not a choice, that's a "we want you to switch specs for different fights to suit your needs."

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Q u o t e:
Likewise, we want the raid to react a little differently if a DK is tanking instead of a Feral druid. We want the choice of class you pick as a tank to be more than just art.

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I don't really like this line of thought, I think it leads to many of the problems we're dealing with right now. A tank should choose what class he plays based on the playstyle of whichever class fits him/her the best, but there shouldn't be a huge dichotomy for how the raid deals with it, because there will always be small imbalances between those flavors, and it will magnify the issue and make it much worse. This is beside the fact that this line of thinking really screws up the idea of WoW as community. Say you have a bunch of friends in a guild that needs a tank, however, you're a DK and their collective playstyle suits a warrior, you either jam a square peg in a round hole, and make everybody uncomfortable with the situation, or you don't get to play with your friends... That seems like a crappy choice to me.

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Q u o t e:
Likewise, we want the raid to react a little differently if a DK is tanking instead of a Feral druid.

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Like benching us for the druid after we get killed in 2 hits.

As long as you support Death Knights having 3 trees to tank with, you're going to have to make them mostly the same.
As long as differences exist, there will be a general purpose "Best" spec.
Why balance 6 tanking specs? When all you need to do is balance 4 tanking classes?

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Q u o t e:


I don't really like this line of thought, I think it leads to many of the problems we're dealing with right now. A tank should choose what class he plays based on the playstyle of whichever class fits him/her the best, but there shouldn't be a huge dichotomy for how the raid deals with it, because there will always be small imbalances between those flavors, and it will magnify the issue and make it much worse. This is beside the fact that this line of thinking really screws up the idea of WoW as community. Say you have a bunch of friends in a guild that needs a tank, however, you're a DK and their collective playstyle suits a warrior, you either jam a square peg in a round hole, and make everybody uncomfortable with the situation, or you don't get to play with your friends... That seems like a crappy choice to me.

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The frightening part is that this is what lead us to Uld-Hard modes.

Raids certainly do need to react differently when warriors and paladins tank...I wonder if its skill...Hey, I know, lets ask Ensidia!

The future patch changes nothing but who takes that "so much easier its stupid" slot.

The developers problem is that they are worried about flavor/uniqueness when the balance is out of whack. GC...You are polishing the brass on the Titanic, man.