RSS feed2008-07-28 16:48:01
I'll start out by saying that I tanked in Alpha and the experience was pretty fun most of the time. There were a couple points where I'd lose hate to another class, but overall it was pretty easy.
Yesterday, I picked up some tank gear and decided to try my hand at Utgarde Keep just to see how I held up with the changes. The increased threat generation is great on paper, but in practice I had a hard time keeping hate. I know that ret paladins got a damage boost, but I kept losing hate to one and that's just not cool.
A couple of issues I see is that we simply don't have enough hit points. Even buffed with priest stam buffs, I couldn't get over 10k HP. Which is bad in some cases where being able to last is extremely important. The final boss in UK would tear me a new one with just his regular smash. On top of that, my parry and dodge were horrible. I don't think my dodge was over 10% even in tanking gear. Something needs to be done about that. My parry was 12% or something to that effect and that's with the parry trinket we started with. My armor was also only about 11k which was about 53% damage mitigation. My protection warrior in a mix of tank gear is well over that with a shield. I think the 45% armor gained in Frost Presence should be boosted because shields give more armor as well as more defense rating, parry, dodge, stats, and any combination of abilities. Granted, we still don't have excellent tanking gear yet, but something needs to be done about basic mitigation.
For a single target, I tried to keep my normal rotation which is Plague Strike -> Degeneration -> Icy Touch (if I didn't use it to pull) -> Death Coil -> Blood Strike (or Obliterate) rinse and repeat. For solo play that seems to work pretty well, but when tanking, it doesn't generate hate fast enough. The sad thing is, it used to. So I had to make some changes to my rotation since damage is extremely important on the initial pull. I tried to use Obliterate and Plague Strike a bit more since those are my major damage dealing abilities. I'd dump runic power by using Death Coil as well, but when going against caster mobs, Mind Freeze would find its way into the rotation if no one was interrupting them. If I lost hate from the mob, I could use Blood Boil to get it back (provided there were diseases on the target), or use Death Grip, but the long cooldown on Death Grip makes it something you can only use once in a while. Death knights do need some kind of "get hate back" ability that we can use reliably and often.
Multiple target tanking is fun as hell. I'll go ahead and admit that. With Death and Decay in a much improved state over it's Alpha version keeping hate on multiple targets is rockin'. The main problem with this is that if you use it as an opener, then you'll be rune starved for a few moments. I usually dropped D&D, then hit the mobs with Howling Blast. If you have a mage around, then having the mage freeze the mobs once they get close, then use Howling Blast on them is quite effective. Not sure why, but I can pretty much keep all mobs in check if it's a multi-mob pull. With Pestilence and Blood Boil, you can really do a good job with that. Granted, it's not as awesome as a paladin, but it's damn close. Where you're gonna have problems is when a mob is immune to diseases. In that case, you'll be having an uphill fight to keep hate since none of your really good moves will work. I hope D&D doesn't get changed, since it really works well and can be used even when soloing. The cost is high, but the payout is awesome.
The biggest issue is that you have to avoid getting rune starved, so it's best to try and use abilities that either use one rune or runic power. Multiple rune moves are great, but can stall your ability to do damage. Waiting is bad, bad, bad.
Casters still kick your butt. I know Blizz has said that death knights are good against caster mobs, but I don't see it. Until you get the Anti-Magic abilities, you're just as good as everyone else against caster mobs. Warriors are better since they have Spell Reflect. Mind Freeze is great if the mob can be spell interrupted, but as you know, most boss mobs can't. So you're eating those spells most of the time. The resistances are nice in theory, but still too low to really make a huge difference. Some of the more interesting abilities for dealing with casters you have to put talent points into, so death knights aren't really anti-caster out of the box. I'm going to run some more tests before I really get into this, but so far I don't see much of a difference between a death knight and a paladin with regards to caster mobs.
Mitigation and hit points...please fix this. Perhaps it doesn't need to be as high as a warrior, but something needs to be done since parry and dodge stats are so low. I'm going to get some enchants and such for my tank gear to see how well I can improve the stats. Either throw more agility on the gear to get some dodge and crit (both are good to a tanking death knight), or perhaps allow other stats to contribute to dodge and parry.
Well, I have to head to work, but I'll keep this thread updated as I try more things. Perhaps with the new build some issues will be taken care of, and there will be some new ones.
-EDarkness
Yesterday, I picked up some tank gear and decided to try my hand at Utgarde Keep just to see how I held up with the changes. The increased threat generation is great on paper, but in practice I had a hard time keeping hate. I know that ret paladins got a damage boost, but I kept losing hate to one and that's just not cool.
A couple of issues I see is that we simply don't have enough hit points. Even buffed with priest stam buffs, I couldn't get over 10k HP. Which is bad in some cases where being able to last is extremely important. The final boss in UK would tear me a new one with just his regular smash. On top of that, my parry and dodge were horrible. I don't think my dodge was over 10% even in tanking gear. Something needs to be done about that. My parry was 12% or something to that effect and that's with the parry trinket we started with. My armor was also only about 11k which was about 53% damage mitigation. My protection warrior in a mix of tank gear is well over that with a shield. I think the 45% armor gained in Frost Presence should be boosted because shields give more armor as well as more defense rating, parry, dodge, stats, and any combination of abilities. Granted, we still don't have excellent tanking gear yet, but something needs to be done about basic mitigation.
For a single target, I tried to keep my normal rotation which is Plague Strike -> Degeneration -> Icy Touch (if I didn't use it to pull) -> Death Coil -> Blood Strike (or Obliterate) rinse and repeat. For solo play that seems to work pretty well, but when tanking, it doesn't generate hate fast enough. The sad thing is, it used to. So I had to make some changes to my rotation since damage is extremely important on the initial pull. I tried to use Obliterate and Plague Strike a bit more since those are my major damage dealing abilities. I'd dump runic power by using Death Coil as well, but when going against caster mobs, Mind Freeze would find its way into the rotation if no one was interrupting them. If I lost hate from the mob, I could use Blood Boil to get it back (provided there were diseases on the target), or use Death Grip, but the long cooldown on Death Grip makes it something you can only use once in a while. Death knights do need some kind of "get hate back" ability that we can use reliably and often.
Multiple target tanking is fun as hell. I'll go ahead and admit that. With Death and Decay in a much improved state over it's Alpha version keeping hate on multiple targets is rockin'. The main problem with this is that if you use it as an opener, then you'll be rune starved for a few moments. I usually dropped D&D, then hit the mobs with Howling Blast. If you have a mage around, then having the mage freeze the mobs once they get close, then use Howling Blast on them is quite effective. Not sure why, but I can pretty much keep all mobs in check if it's a multi-mob pull. With Pestilence and Blood Boil, you can really do a good job with that. Granted, it's not as awesome as a paladin, but it's damn close. Where you're gonna have problems is when a mob is immune to diseases. In that case, you'll be having an uphill fight to keep hate since none of your really good moves will work. I hope D&D doesn't get changed, since it really works well and can be used even when soloing. The cost is high, but the payout is awesome.
The biggest issue is that you have to avoid getting rune starved, so it's best to try and use abilities that either use one rune or runic power. Multiple rune moves are great, but can stall your ability to do damage. Waiting is bad, bad, bad.
Casters still kick your butt. I know Blizz has said that death knights are good against caster mobs, but I don't see it. Until you get the Anti-Magic abilities, you're just as good as everyone else against caster mobs. Warriors are better since they have Spell Reflect. Mind Freeze is great if the mob can be spell interrupted, but as you know, most boss mobs can't. So you're eating those spells most of the time. The resistances are nice in theory, but still too low to really make a huge difference. Some of the more interesting abilities for dealing with casters you have to put talent points into, so death knights aren't really anti-caster out of the box. I'm going to run some more tests before I really get into this, but so far I don't see much of a difference between a death knight and a paladin with regards to caster mobs.
Mitigation and hit points...please fix this. Perhaps it doesn't need to be as high as a warrior, but something needs to be done since parry and dodge stats are so low. I'm going to get some enchants and such for my tank gear to see how well I can improve the stats. Either throw more agility on the gear to get some dodge and crit (both are good to a tanking death knight), or perhaps allow other stats to contribute to dodge and parry.
Well, I have to head to work, but I'll keep this thread updated as I try more things. Perhaps with the new build some issues will be taken care of, and there will be some new ones.
-EDarkness
Aswansea
