Friday, December 4, 2009

Possible DK Tanking Changes with the Patch

So I found this in a "blue" post on MMO-Champion:


Effective Health and Tanking
Too many of you are using EH (which is a very powerful concept for purposes of trying to decide how to gear your tank) as the number that indicates tank awesomeness. The higher the EH, the better tank I must be. It's just not that simple.

I have yet to see any data that suggests warriors wipe relatively more than other tanks. What so many of these posts say are:

1) I wipe a lot. It must be my class.
2) Because my EH is lower, I am guessing that I wipe more often.
3) I'm not sure if I wipe more often or not, but please just give me a buff so I feel better.

The only argument I have seen so far that seems at all reasonable is that stamina scaling or other factors might eventually lead to warriors (and DKs) having a problem, and that "eventually" could happen in Icecrown. Unfortunately that's impossible to prove or disprove at this stage since it's all speculation. It's definitely something to keep an eye on though.



So the part that is of concern is highlighted in the last paragraph.

"The only argument I have seen so far that seems at all reasonable is that stamina scaling or other factors might eventually lead to warriors (and DKs) having a problem, and that "eventually" could happen in Icecrown."

It appears from reading through the post, a lot of warriors are complaining that their tanking ability isn't as high as Druids, Paladins and possibly DKs.

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with that statement. I believe all tanks have perks based on their class. Druids have ungodly amounts of health and armor. Paladins have great AoE ability and not to mention Lay on Hands. Deathknights have Death and Decay combined with Pestilence and Rune Strike. Warriors have shield bash in the mix of other class specific abilities.

So I'm not sure I agree with the logic behind the complaints but what does worry me is that they are talking about stamina scaling us?!? Seriously, we don't have any more stamina boost than a Paladin has. We sure don't have the amount of boosts that a druid gets.

Yes, Frost Presence does give me an added 6% boost to my stamina. 6%! That really isn't that much! I've picked enchants and gems to help it boost where I can. I currently have all epic stamina gems in my sockets...that gives me +32 stamina each. I am using 2 dragon's eye gems for stamina that gives me +52 stamina each and I have a couple stamina boost enchants.

Rightfully, I've worked hard to get my health pool up to 32,000+ self buffed. Compared to many of the other tanks I pass in Dalaran and near summoning stones for raids...I'm not nearly as high as most of them.

So with that being said, if you "scale" my stamina boosts too much, that nice little health pool that I've been trying to build up could drop back below 30,000.

I'm not sure what boosts warriors get but I'm sure they wouldn't be too happy to see their health pool dropped either.

On the reverse of this. Deathknights do have a large mitigation percentage. The idea for me is to NOT get hit but when I do, to have the health to buy time for a healer to recover me.

With a druid, their avoidance is much lower, but they can take more hits and still recover.

Paladins and warriors have the ability to block. This is a stat that I can't get. I don't have the ability to carry a shield. Not to mention Paladins want to get hit in order to help them gain threat.

All things being said and considered, this could be a big downfall for DKs more so then warriors I think. It's not unusual now to see "LF Tank for xxxx (no DKs)" in the looking for group channel. Lowering our stamina could make this even more common. We're already classified by many of our fellow gamers as "dumbknights", why give them another reason to doubt our abilities?

Maybe it's time for me to rethink the idea of rolling a Paladin.

I may be totally off here and they are talking about the nerfs that have already taken effect, and I hope that's the case. Maybe they aren't leaning towards nerfing our stamina pools again. If that's the case, then I'm ok with where my stamina pool is now, just don't lower it again!

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