DK:: FROST TANK



2 pc: - One thing I'd point out is you might be seeing dps dks use 2 pc tanking for aoe situations, which might be a little awkward. Another is DK aoe threat doesn't really need help as much as single target.

4pc: - Blood tap mini CD is peachy.

Warrior: Protection
4pc Bonus

I like the idea of another minor defensive cooldown as a set bonus. Pretty neat.

However, I bloodrage whenever I can't use something; it's practically part of my rotation for a warrior, and I don't like the idea that i'll be balanced around a 4pc that pretty much turns my resource move into a you-need-to-save-this defensive cooldown.

Warrior:Protection
2 piece – Pretty good. It should provide a decent increase in TPS and damage.
4 piece – Very poor compared to the other classes. It will most likely be gone in 1 hit in any case. In the case of a magical damage, it will be gone for sure in 1 hit. The only way to get this high enough is by using Last Stand and a HP trinket on-use effect but at that time you don't need the cooldown bonus.

Druid:Feral /Tanking
2 piece – Decent AoE damage buff but they are already doing good. Light DPS bonus.
4 piece – Super strong bonus added to the class with the highest EH. In any worst case scenario, it will mitigate the most damage (if you don't avoid any hit).

Paladin:Protection
2 piece – Decent TPS and DPS upgrade.
4 piece – Very different from the other ones. Only for physical damage, but paladins are already ahead for magical EH. Chances the chance to be hit 4 times in a row from 2% to 0.6% if you have 60% dodge and 6% to 2% for 3 hits in a row. Decent bonus.

Death Knight:Any tanking spec
2 piece bonus - Decent AoE boost for AoE. Won't affect DPS on boss fights.
4 piece bonus - Very decent bonus but players have to adapt to get it or manage their runes differently. Not as strong as druid but better by far than warriors.

Deathknight :Blood Tank (Sometimes Frost or UH)

2 piece -- It looks like you want us to AoE tank more. If Icecrown Citadel has a lot more AoE, this will be nice. For single target threat, it's fairly lacking. Death and Decay is awkward at best for a single target rotation and it's generally a poorer use of runes than the single target rotation.

Paladins, Druids, and Warriors all get a bonus to their single target threat as well--I think it might be nice if a spec agnostic single target threat ability was added to this bonus as well. Rune Strike perhaps? I know it's been done, but we liked that one. Encore, I say!

[edit: Alternately, buffing the class specific strikes e.g. Scourge Strike, Heart Strike, Oblit -- might be interesting. Just please consider avoiding making it an infrequently used ability for a given spec's rotation--the single threat boosts for the other tanks are all part of their normal rotation]

4 piece--It looks nice. Kudos. :) We'll have to think a bit more before popping that blood tap to use our spec-specific tank CDs, but that's okay. Managing CDs is part of the fun of tanking.

For dks:

2piece: add in a single target component for the tanks, perhaps a damage increase to rune strike when diseases are up

4piece: I like the idea of the mini cooldown as well, but maybe it is time to also think about removing the resource cost on IBF so that dks won't be in some situations where they need to use blood tap->then IBF if there is a Rp problem.

Death Knight : Blood
2 piece – I personally like this change. While a lot would find it more useful to have the bonus damage on abilities such as heart-strike or death-strike/Obliterate, I think it's nice to have to choose which ability you want to use at any given point. If bonus damage were applied to core rotational abilities, it would only staple them as the sole abilities of the rotation. With Death and Decay getting bonus damage, it would provoke me to consider if it were worth it at the time to drop the big threat aoe move on a boss depending on the situation rather then feeling the need to spam heart-strike more.

4 piece – It's interresting to have a tertiary cooldown like ability based off the bonus. I personally don't use blood tap at all currently, but if this change went live I would use it fairly often. The only current arguement anyone has launched is based off the type of damage we are likely to see in Icecrown. In some other threads it's been fairly well theorycrafted that if the bosses have singular moves that cause massive spikes in damage, then the constant damage reduction would not be as useful as one that simply blocks a flat amount of damage. But in the reverse if bosses caused large amounts of damage quickly, be it through fast attacks or abilities in which they suddenly do more damage faster, then damage reduction is favored. The issue of weither or not it is a good bonus can really only come after the community can see what types of damage will be coming in the next raid.

Warrior : Protection
2 piece – No real feed-back here, I don't play a warrior tank so I can't comment if this seems like a good or bad change.
4 piece – The tool-tip is currently unclear as to if this is a shield that will reduce all incoming attacks by a factor based on the tanks health, or if it is a one time shield that will vanish once it has absorbed all of the damage it is intented to absorb.

Druid : Feral
2 piece – No real feed-back here, I don't play a Druid tank so I can't comment if this seems like a good or bad change.
4 piece – See feed-back on the Death-Knight 4 piece as the damage reduction ability is similar and thus has similar concerns and thoughts.

Paladin : Protection
2 piece – No real feed-back here, I don't play a Paladin tank so I can't comment if this seems like a good or bad change.
4 piece – It has been said that avoidance is getting to absurd levels, which makes this tier bonus confusing as it seems to be adding in a flat amount of dodge that isn't affected by diminishing returns. This is more of a double-edged sword as if the paladin tank dodges every attack while the bonus is up, then it could be considered far superior to other reduction abilities across the 4 piece tier sets. Granted if the tanks luck is poor and they do not dodge anything, then this is completly worthless. If a paladin tank has near 50-60% avoidance already, then adding on another 12% avoidance almost gaurentee's that they will avoid more attacks then the other tanks by having a nearly 2/3 to 3/4 change to avoid incoming damage for 10 seconds. It seems more appropriate to keep the 4 piece tier bonuses consistant with the paladin tanks four piece bonus being more like the warrior tanks bonus of a damage absorbing shield when divine plea is enabled.


These are first impressions, not backed by theory crafting numbers or the opinions of the community.

EDIT: Spelling, and forgot to remove the template from the top ><

Warrior 2 PC should be Shield Slam and Thunder Clap..but its fine as is.

Warrior 4 PC is underpowered.

First on regular mobs..it prevents rage generations.

and on hard hitting bosses..it wont really matter..

Suggestion: I would like to see a damage reduction instead of absorb ala DK 4 PC.

Paladin: Protection

2 Piece: Nothing exciting but it's still worth getting. A DPS/TPS increase. Cool

4 Piece: Why buff avoidance on tanks more when it's too high already? 12% dodge on a 60 second cooldown for 10 seconds is pretty powerful.

Paladin 4 pc tanking bonus:

Needs clarification. Is it only on manual activation, or does each hit that refreshes the duration count as 'activating' the bonus?

If the dodge bonus refreshes on each hit, it's overpowered.

If it's only on manual activation, then it's got an effective cooldown of 50 seconds (60s DP CD - 10s duration) and is 'okay'.

I think the Druid 4pc is awesome, except it's going to make it pretty hard to replace. It might be too good.

Druid bonuses are amazing, thank you!

Warrior:Protection

2pc-A bit cliche but decent. Would be much better if it affected Thunderclap instead of Shockwave
4pc-Somewhat inferior to a 10 sec. 12% DR for raiding. It also has high potential of being broken in Arena, a prot warrior with high health could have a 10-12k absorb shield every minute.

Warriors, DKs and Druids get DR mini CDs from abilities that are not tied the GCDs - Paladins get Avoidance up the wazoo on a gcd-tied ability.

Darielle made a reference on the synergy between the existing cooldowns for the tanking classes and their new mini-CD and I agree with that. They do kind of make sense from that perspective.

The only qualm is that 12% dodge will do zilch for paladins on unavoidable special attacks -- and on trash/outgeared content, the paladin tank will be sitting easily at 40% dodge, and possibly much more (On my paladin tank, I'm sitting at over 30% with the 245 libram proc).

My main concern is the return of Sunwell Radiance 2:Electric Boogaloo if you see start seeing a lot of paladin tanks at 70% avoidance (sans block).

Pally 4 piece is essentially an avoidance cooldown on a minute long timer. Instead of hitting my Divine Plea once at the beginning of a pull, I'll hit it at the beginning and then for high incoming damage situations on a boss.

Not as bad as I thought at first glance.

I will provide my feedback, and I will keep it brief.

1) They all seem incredibly overpowered for set bonuses.

2) They are all to similar (on the whole): +20% aoe damage and 12% damage reduction.

In my opinion, the bonuses need to be reworked entirely. Too powerful and too similar across the board.

Dk 4 piece is great. I rarely ever consider using rune tap, maybe like twice a week? Now I'll be managing its use all the time. Set bonuses that make use of underused skills are great!

Our aoe threat is pretty decent, how bout a buff to single target threat? Rune Strike is done and feels kinda lame to have a set bonus on it now, maybe something with diseases? Maybe when all diseases are up on the target, they produce a synergy effect and increase each others dmg?

Or allow our diseases to reduce target attack power for two piece bonus!

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Q u o t e:
Warrior:Protection
2 piece – please change warrior bonus to Thunderclap and Shockwave

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Umm...no. Shield Slam needs a way to attain higher damage. SS's average threat is actually being surpassed by Devastate in some situations (using 2p T8 and 2p T9). If the current trend continued into T10 content then SS would basically be removed from the Prot rotation unless Shield Block was up since it really hasn't went up much, if any at all, between T7 and T9 content in terms of damage output due to tanks avoiding SBV on gear since Block is such a weak mechanic these days.