frost presence nerf :(

[loxim]

Joy, we now have no magic reduction unless you spec for it. Lame. We are suppose to be good against caster tanks. Now we have none in a presence, and need to deep spec for anything. Super Sigh.

[Memetomori]

It's still a 5% magic reduction, it just spills over into physical damage as well. And most DKs will spec into magic damage reduction one way or another (6% magic suppression or 2% overall damage imp. frost presence). It may seem like a tanking nerf but the truth is that you really have to test it on ptr to know, that and feedback on ptr uually results in more tweaking if the nerf is too major.

[Abandon]

Small buff to Frost Aura too.

[Ilfayt]

Small buff to Frost Aura too.

You mean imp. Frost Presence, Frost Aura is being taken out to be switched with that.

[bujaberry]

Aura was useless anyways.

[Illmar]

No biggie.

[Admuntour]

It isn't exactly a nerf, its more of a shuffle in mitigation.
Frost presence went from 10% magic mitigation to 5% mitigation for everything, which is a good thing.

1st New frost presence has better synergy with blade barrier.
2nd All damage will now be steadier.
3rd Death Knights where already top magic mitigation tanks if they specced for it, and it was by a wide margin, this is only a very slight nerf in that department.

Now two of the 3 tank specs have some additional magic mitigation.
Frost has improved frost presence that boosts all mitigation by a bit.
Unholy has magic suppression.
All DKs can also get rune of spellshattering for boost to spell mitigation, something no other tank class has access too.

As for physical mitigation, apart from a few fights physical is the main source of incoming damage, BB is low enough in the blood tree that every DK tank has access to it, so every DK will now have 10% damage reduction.
One of the prime reasons that we argued we needed more avoidance then other tanks as DKs, was because we didn't have enough mitigation, fair enough, Blizz takes away 10% avoidance and gives us 10% mitigation.
So as DKs we now have a lot of armor, a good HP pool, some nice mitigation and very good avoidance. DKs are more in line with the other tanks in therms of what I've mentioned, but they still keep their unique flavor.
DKs have as much dodge, parry and miss as a warrior has dodge, parry, block and miss, DKs have no shields but they don't need it since the armor makes up for it, as for raw mitigation like 10% less damage taken from def stance, well DKs have that too now. Dks ahve the shortest CDs among tanks so they still keep their unique flavor, they still can reach the highest magic mitigation if they wish and they still have the most avoidance among tanks.

I was really angry about the blade barrier nerfs, but with how the changes are shaping up now, I think I could live with it.

[tvveeder]

DK's chaining cooldowns combined with powerful passive mitigation (60%+ in the first tier of content, and thats as blood with 30k+ unbuffed and 1 minute VB) gives them a powerful edge in both avoidance and threat. The changes in general are quite nice.

-10% Parry means a small loss of threat from RS procs, but was needed due to balancing issues.
-10% Magic from "Live" to the current PTR build on 5% to all means we take extra magic damage, but this is offset by 5% from the new Blade Barrier. If you're frost you get 4% extra mitigation also, along with the new UA. Steadier damage intake, less stress on healers. Still however, is a nerf due to the power of avoidance.

Say a fully buffed tank on live has 60% psychical avoidance. After the nerf he will be at 50%.
Live: 40% chance to be hit
PTR: 50% chance to be hit

Result: 20% increase in damage taken. (Is however, RNG based.)

Yes, I dislike this change, but it is needed due to the numbers of effective health obtainable in any spec.

The only thing I dislike that they are doing is that it will make tanks really want to go frost moreso than other specs. From armor in frost presence you should have around 65% mitigation, plus 5% more from the passive mitigation, so right at 70%. Then with blade barrier it pops you up to 75% mitigation, imp frost presence takes you up to 77% mitigation. So base as a frost tank with blade barrier and imp frost presence you will reduce all physical damage by 77%, and spell mitigation drops to 7% without factoring in resists or other talents that could potentially increase spell mitigation. So all in all what you lose is 3% spell mitigation (as frost tank) and gain 17% physical damage mitigation. Then you factor in UA and IBF and it could turn DK's into incredible mitigation tanks... but now our avoidance will suck in comparison to other classes. I mean hell with IBF popped and capped Def (540) you will mitigate 50% of damage done to you, so that's like saying with IBF up you will mitigate roughly 88.5% (77% + (23%*.5)) of all damage taken. So maybe the whole mitigation tank could work out fairly well for DK's in the sense we won't take near as much burst damage, but we will take much more consistent damage.

[taek]

EDIT: ah nvm...it looks the "new" glyph of UBA is just a wording semantics change and not an actual functionality change. It still does what it did before on PTR, +1% to UBA (despite the misleading text).

[loxim]

They are basically just turning us into warriors with a different name. Oh hey lets get rid of the higher parry chance and just keep it in line with warriors. Then we will just give them some more damage mitigation across the board. Yeah its good and all from blizz perspective, but DKs were made to be parry, not to be forced into damn warrior tanks.

[Diablomortis]

you will reduce all physical damage by 77%

please correct me if i am mistaken but isn't there a 75% hard cap for maximum mitigation?

[Sithlord87m]

That's only for armor afaik, a good example where you get more than 75% would be the talented AMS. Say you have 1 point, than it's >75%