Death Knights

[Swither]

DK's good for dps & tanking?

Thinking of a new melee char and from what I've seen/experienced warriors get a rough deal, as pallys can replace them and heal.

Comments please (was thinking frost spec DK)

 

[McHoff H. McChrist]

DK DPS really shines in AE, they usually annihilate the meters on trash packs. On bosses though, they're fairly lack-lustre. They're alright, and they bring other buffs, but they don't touch fury warriors or other high DPS classes.

DK tanks are fine, I imagine. Ours went inactive just before i started raiding, so i haven't seen them in action, but they're perfectly viable, a lot of guilds use them.
I'm not sure what you mean by warriors being screwed as they can be replaced by paladins. You can replace a DK tank with a paladin too. You could replace any tank with any other, IMO.
I haven't seen a fight which requires a specific tank yet, Blizzard have "dumbed down" raiding so it doesn't require specific classes for anything really.

And yes, Frost spec seems to be popular for tanking, Blood seems popular for leveling (lots of self-healing, minimal downtime), and Unholy seems best for AE dps.

 

[Kaine]

my DK is tank set up and has fairly dencent gear for it only downside so far if i loose aggro hard to get it back as all aggro pulling skills have a cd for death knights guarenteed a dps will get the aggro whilst the cd is on.
will be interesting for DKs after dual role patch goes in as i can see a lot of tank/dps dks running around
mines called mcstompy if you want to check him out on the armory

 

[Swither]

Cheers m8 interesting stuff.

I take it ur a pally Stood?

And tx Kaine.

 

[Janie]

The biggest problem with DK is that there are so many of them about.
Have you concidered a Feral Druid? - You get to Tank and DPS without having to swap trees and for some reason there seem to be very few Feral Druid about (certainly that Tank) thesedays - on the server I play on anyway.

 

[Swither]

Hated the big bear arse in my view when I played a druid, so that's out.

I guess it is between a DK or Warrior, or maybe even a 'shudder' paladin. I'm also looking at Shaman as they seem versitile for casting and melee, but more likely to be a true melee.

 

[Bunty]

i really like my dk, it's a fun solo. i solo'd murmur with it and bash mandokir every so often just in case my raptor's come in

 

[McHoff H. McChrist]

Cheers m8 interesting stuff.

I take it ur a pally Stood?

And tx Kaine.

Nein, fury warrior atm. Not really playing atm though, waiting for new content.

Also, all taunt abilities of all classes have a cooldown.
The trick is to only use them when you lose agro, just use your general threat gen attacks normally.

 

[Janie]

One thing I have noticed with Tanks (well certainly Warrior ones at least) there is a horrible period when you just reach 80 and the gear you have isn't good enough to tank Heroics (your average pug anyway) - if you have a good guild that'll help you gear up it's not so bad - but only having 18-22000 HP does mean you'll be kicked from alot of pug groups.
DPS and Healers can pretty much enter heroics as soon as they hit 80 - Tanks however are expected to have a certain level of gear!

 

[MarkS]

Most will look to make sure you are crit immune (452 def iirc), i can stand around in Dalaran getting nagged to come tank stuff coz im standing around in my off spec naxx 25 tank gear that i only took as it would be sharded otherwise and the idiots would rather take me with 0 prot than a proper prot warrior tank just coz they have 430 def or so.

 

[McHoff H. McChrist]

But j00 has epixxx!

 

[Potnoodle]

Crit immune is 540 defence rating, bears need 0 with survival of the fittest. Just on druids it is good if you spec feral but even within feral there are two specs, one dps, one tanking so you can be a good tank and average dps, or good dps and average tank. lots of whining at the moment in the druid community regarding up-coming changes as bears are changing tremendously. I think ill be going resto / feral tank in dual spec.

IMO i would ignore which ones are better than others currently and just give a go what you think is fun, they are forever balancing, nerfing, buffing etc so what is good now might not be good in the future, all tanks are able to do all content.

There are lots of DKs around but not many DK tanks, ive never healed one as potteh.

on a side note i tried my first heroic healing last night, nexus, wiped twice on the boss that splits into 3 as i kept gettng nuked down but have to say im enjoying it, just takes some getting used to, very different to my druid healing.

Pot

 

[Zeus]

when i first hit 80 2 weeks or so after release, there was plenty of opportunity for a 20k hp or so tank to get into groups - with equally geared healers and dps, ofc. i'd got the craftable stuff i could (tempered saronite mostly, with the titansteel hat and shield) a tank weapon from zul'drak, and... thats probably about it.
and you know what? we still managed to clear heroics. in many cases faster than pugs today that go in there with a 28k hp tank, an epicced up healer, and 3 supposedly raider dps.

on my healer, i've found that the tanks actual hp doesnt matter too much. sometimes i'll heal a 22k warrior fine, and in the same heroic a 25k warrior will die before i can get him a heal. its, at least partly, because with hp being the most visible stat on a tank, its what people stack to get into heroics. i wish they wouldnt .
on my tank currently i have just over 30k hp unbuffed, and am now working on avoidance - 570 (or 585ish if i swap around a few pieces) defence helps a lot in the avoidance stakes tbh - and means i dont have to worry about accidently dropping below cap.

 

[Agravaine]

I use my DK for tanking and DPS.

Currently Frost spec as I always seem to come back to it but on the test server I'm Blood (61/5/5) for tanking and Unholy/Blood (17/0/54) for DPS.

Both seem pretty awesome TBH.

My Druid is also spec'd for tanking and it's waaaaaaaay simpler than DK as you have much less to do and worry about.

 

[Janie]

when i first hit 80 2 weeks or so after release, there was plenty of opportunity for a 20k hp or so tank to get into groups - with equally geared healers and dps, ofc. i'd got the craftable stuff i could (tempered saronite mostly, with the titansteel hat and shield) a tank weapon from zul'drak, and... thats probably about it.
and you know what? we still managed to clear heroics. in many cases faster than pugs today that go in there with a 28k hp tank, an epicced up healer, and 3 supposedly raider dps.

Yeah if your in a good guild then it offsets alot of the problems however if you end up trying to Pug heroics most of the time, thesedays you'll end up being kicked if your a tank without decent gear. It seems odd because you can make things easier for the tank by using crowd control but no-one it seems is ever interested in used CC thesedays! Certainly the easier heroics like Gun'Drak (The 3rd boss has to be the easiest boss ever!), Drak, Utguard Keep, Old Kingdom & Violet Hold (Unless you get that nasty Shadow Void boss) can be tanked without need of super gear. In a sensible group only really Halls of Lightning and maybe Utguard Pinicle depending on how you tackle the Harpoon boss could be a problem.