DK Threat - Not Going Away

#0 - Jan. 8, 2009, 10:40 p.m.

Threat has been and still is a major concern for DK tanks that do competative content.

It's not an issue in heroics, everyone agrees.

It's not an issue with low DPS, everyone still agrees.

It's not an issue for AoE packs.

It's a HUGE issue when you play with other solid tanks and you realize Paladin and Druids can maintain 6-10k TPS (Paladin on the top end, Druids on the low)

It's a HUGE issue when your DPS starts cranking out 4-6k DPS and you're stuck topping out at 5k TPS.

DK's have by far the lowest threat of all the tanks at the moment. Maybe it's enough for you to handle your DPS. It isn't for me. It makes a big difference when deciding who should tank an encounter. DK threat needs to be balanced with the other tanks. We don't need more, we're not asking to be OP, but it is a severe hinderence on our raid viability.

I hate to say it, but people in full blues being blown away by their 4.5k TPS need to stop posting that our threat is not a problem. It is a problem for those of us tanking in raid guilds competing with great players. It is much lower then other classes.

Please God stop posting your 3.5k TPS acting like everything is fine because the 1000 DPS rogue wasn't even close to out-threating you. That isn't the point.

Q u o t e:
simple answer here: threat is an issue when you dont have blessing of sanctuary; non-issue when you have it.

That is plain wrong. Druids and Warriors get as much of a benefit from BoSanc as we do. Just because our threat increases does not make it competative. Raids need to be able to see either a benefit or equality (indifference) in DK tanking compared to the other classes or they will consistently find themselves "off-tanking."

It seriously matters. DK threat needs to be looked at. I don't know if it's the threat modifier of Frost presence or whatever, but something needs to change.

I'm just so fed up between Blizzard's "tests" claiming that all tanks are equal in threat (which we know is completely false, even if you leave DK's out of the equation) and DK players tanking for the first time in their lives thinking that they're doing good TPS but can't complete a heroic because the DPS they play with is so bad.

Ghostcrawler

#90 - Jan. 12, 2009, 10:58 p.m.

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.

Ghostcrawler

#157 - Jan. 13, 2009, 6:08 a.m.

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.

Ghostcrawler

#315 - Jan. 13, 2009, 10:20 p.m.

We are looking into this issue and found one bug that we are hotfixing.

I will attempt to explain:

Most auras go away when you die, but some don't. Frost Presence and Defensive Stance have some effects that go away and some that do not (this is the bug). It ends up that a DK who dies loses some of the threat bonus from Frost Presence, but doesn't get it back when he comes back to life because the game thinks Frost Presence is still active and doesn't attempt to reapply the buff. If you change presence from Frost to something else and back, then all the buffs get reapplied correctly, but most tanks probably aren't doing that.

So it's entirely possible that if you die and come back without changing presences that you have just gimped your threat generation. You aren't losing all your bonus threat generation. You are basically losing the amount that we gave all tanks to compensate for pulling Blessing of Salvation out of the game.

If all of that confuses you, the take home message is we fixed a bug where your threat would be low after dying. Again, by the time you read this, the bug should have been hotfixed.

It is likely this bug was also affecting warriors in Defensive Stance and the hotfix will catch that too. It was not affecting paladins or druids because their spells work differently.

We don't know if this is the entire issue with DK (and possibly warrior) threat being low, but it should help, especially if you ever die while raiding. Some of the guilds who are seeing this problem have very high dps, which implies they have experienced the content a lot and might not be dying that much.