#1 - March 3, 2017, 8:49 p.m.
There's no question that DH's are the least represented tanking class in Nighthold. A quick look at warcraft logs reveals only ~3000 DH parses. This is about half that of both Blood DK and Prot warriors who sit at around ~6000 parses. Druids sit at the top around 15,000 parses. That's about a 1:5 ratio of DH's to Guardian Druids. As you look at more difficult (and magic damage) fights, the numbers only get worse. There are a whopping 4 Star Augur parses by DH's and 145 by druids. That would be a 1:36 ratio. Only 1 DH has logged a parse on Mythic Elisande.
1. Stats
DH's (among with a few other tanks) don't have good stats to deal with high magic damage fights. All stats seem to work well to deal with physical damage, but few help you consistently survive magic damage.
First up is mastery. Our mastery helps improves Demon Spikes physical damage reduction. Compare this to Guardian druids who get increased health and healing received. On a magic heavy fight I have about 10,000 stat points that are doing me almost no good, while my guardian druid co-tank gets plenty of good use out of his mastery. This problem will only get worse as the expansion progresses and we get more stats. Either all mastery should only effect physical damage, or it should effect both equally. Having mastery also reduce the damage taken during empower wards would be nice. Other possibilities include letting demon spike offer maybe half it's damage reduction in magic damage? We do get the increased attack power from mastery which buffs soul cleave heals, but it's really not enough when compared to the benefits some tanks. Note many of the tanks have this issue with mastery. They all should be looked at.
Crit is another stat that just doesn't help a lot in a magical fight. You can't parry magic damage. The only benefit you get is the chance to crit heal. Unfortunately that is not reliable. We can't be relying on a 25% chance to not die when we need it. In a perfect world tank damage would be slow enough that you could average out the crit chance to heal and be fine. But it's not so it isn't okay. A simple change to make soul cleave heal for an increased amount equal to your crit chance, but lose the ability to crit heal would be very welcome while not directly adding power to the class.
Haste is in an alright spot. It lets us generate more resources and healing in a magic damage environment so it's not as bad as crit and mastery. However, letting it reduce the cooldown of empower wards like demon spikes so it affects magic nad physical damage equally would be very much appreciated.
Vers is fine as it is. Affects both types of damage equally. Unfortuantely this sometimes make it the best stat by a large margin when you know you have to deal with magic damage. Carrying around a bunch of lower ilvl pieces with vers in case you need it isn't very fun.
