Death Knights wanting to nerf themselves....

[Cheezee]

That's an issue why? AoE threat is pretty irrelevant in WOTLK at this point

Aren't people in here bitching about DK threat or did I miss something? Seems to me that if we could do crazy threat single target as well as crazy aoe threat people's heads would explode because they couldn't bitch about it fast enough to relieve the pressure.

[Denalian]

The Icy Touch threat buff is really just a band-aid fix for Death Knight's burst threat.
Hopefully they will revert it back to normal, or at least reduce the modifier for Cataclysm and give us a proper burst threat ability worth using as an opener.

From a balance point of view, at this moment, it was the right choice to buff Icy Touch. We were suffering in the burst threat area and sure it could be sorted with Tricks and MDs, but Blizzard has also stated they're not that fond of Tricks/MDs playing such a huge role in tank threat.
New abilities, talents and significant changes won't come until 4.0 so it was the obvious solution.

However, from a gameplay point of view, it is really awkward to have our lowest damaging ability do highest threat and I'm pretty sure most Death Knights would rather have a real threat ability instead of this.

I'm confident Blizzard is aware of the situation and will deal with it eventually.
For now, I'm guessing we'll just have to deal with it for the rest of this expansion.

I have greater concerns about the upcoming ammounts of Frost DPS DKs pulling 12k TPS...

[jai151]

I have greater concerns about the upcoming ammounts of Frost DPS DKs pulling 12k TPS...

If they're dumb enough to DPS in frost presence, they deserve it. IT threat bump only applies in frost presence.

[Denalian]

If they're dumb enough to DPS in frost presence, they deserve it. IT threat bump only applies in frost presence.

I know this. I'm talking about the new cookie-cutter builds without Subversion.

[Cheezee]

What DK's really need is for Death and Decay to come off the rune system, and be a cooldown of 30 second (15 talented) ability. Waiting 15 seconds, and potentially another 5-10 seconds while your runes are being refreshed has always been totally wrong.

While I agree that a rune free DnD would be pretty amazing I can see where it would lead to problems. A damaging and highly threatening aoe ability with no resource cost would require them to either nerf the ability or nerf DKs in other ways to compensate. Plus it would be rather similar to Consecrate.

[Deleted]

Or, you know, they could just do the simple thing and add a little more threat to Frost Presence.

[Denalian]

Or, you know, they could just do the simple thing and add a little more threat to Frost Presence.

Wouldn't solve anything.
DKs ramp-up time on threat is the problem, not the sustained TPS.

[jai151]

While I agree that a rune free DnD would be pretty amazing I can see where it would lead to problems. A damaging and highly threatening aoe ability with no resource cost would require them to either nerf the ability or nerf DKs in other ways to compensate. Plus it would be rather similar to Consecrate.

Make it an RP dump on a 15 second (10 talented) cooldown with a 7 second duration that does damage every half second. A true RP dump, 0 cost but drains all available RP and does damage based on the amount of RP you dump into it. So if you pulled with icy touch, you drop the 10 RP DnD, which won't do much but it will do enough to hold until you can work in diseases and pestilence, at which point you drop it again for a 30RP drop.

Or, you know, they could just do the simple thing and add a little more threat to Frost Presence.

Which does absolutely nothing for burst. Sustained threat is fine, burst was not. Now it is much better.

[Denalian]

I honestly think Rune Strike plays a bigger role in this than some might think.
It's a great portion of our threat and is very RNG in nature. Sometimes you get a strike right off your first swing, sometimes several swings later. If it had a more determined interval between hits it would help threat too.

Fixing Rune Strike (as Blizzard has stated they will), will probably diminish the need of a huge Icy Touch threat modifier.
Which is also why I believe this "buff" to Icy Touch is really just a temporary fix, or depending on how Cataclysm will evolve, will play a much smaller role than IT spamming does now.

[Offhand]

I see it as a permanent solution.

The whole purpose of burst threat is....to give you burst threat.

What would be the point in giving Death Knights an ability that gives burst threat, just for their next 2 abilities to be tps ramp up abilities (which would be IT and PS).

Making a classes burst tps move the same move as his opening ability rotation makes the most sense.

It is not a band aid, it is how the class should of been designed in the first place.


What DK's really need is for Death and Decay to come off the rune system, and be a cooldown of 30 second (15 talented) ability. Waiting 15 seconds, and potentially another 5-10 seconds while your runes are being refreshed has always been totally wrong.

Burst threat is good and all but it's now too spammable for DKs. You can cast IT 6 times in a normal 20 second period. IT is higher threat then ShoR right now and you can hit it twice as often. That's definitely going to cause problems in the tanking world.

[Zao]

My theory on it is, that Blizzard wanted a simple solution for the snap threat. Because we will probably get quite an overhaul with cata and they didn't want to do something overly complicated for now.

[brirrspliff]

Why in gods name would u want to nerf the IT threat change? All over the official forums and on here people are acting like it really needs a nerf.
Why does it?
Who would complain that they never pull threat off you?

It doesn't affect pvp, only affects pve encounters and should help them run that little bit smoother for some guilds

Funny thing is, i havnt really seen other tank classes moaning about it, only DK's themselves, which is quite frankly bizarre

it's in no way bizzarre, because they are playing the game for FUN (the word means that people actually enjoy what they are doing). but go on and farm your shit while bitching and flaming and outright not having fun.. victim.

[Skullmaster]

You know that spirit gemmed Death Knight you saw back when Wrath started? That guy has actually learned how to tank well enough to get the gear to raid tank, unfortunately his stupidity is still there and seems to think it's a good idea to ask for a nerf or two.

[Cheezee]

Make it an RP dump on a 15 second (10 talented) cooldown with a 7 second duration that does damage every half second. A true RP dump, 0 cost but drains all available RP and does damage based on the amount of RP you dump into it. So if you pulled with icy touch, you drop the 10 RP DnD, which won't do much but it will do enough to hold until you can work in diseases and pestilence, at which point you drop it again for a 30RP drop.

I don't think turning us into Paladins is the way to go personally. I was thinking more along the line of making it like Hungering Cold. Have it cost RP to cast with a 30 second CD. Maybe make a glyph so it doesn't cost RP (or halves the cost) but the CD is increased by 50% to 45 seconds (reduced back to 30 with talents). The damage would need to be nerfed so DPS DKs couldn't abuse it but it would give us an on demand ability to pick up multiple mobs without having to wait for runes to refresh or blow a 5 min CD.

[Bikni]

Well i guess on single target the rotation stops using pestilence and used the 2 openers, and on ae packs, i will still use pestilence, IT might be helpfull if grip and taunt is on cd, you now have another ranged spell to try and get a aggroed mob. really dont see myself IT 4 or 5 mobs in a row, overall might be a tps loss on ae packs. So i dont see whats all the fuss about. But my DK only 76 atm so dont know how it is at 80 compared with other tanks, if its a big difference it might get nerfed.

[jai151]

I don't think turning us into Paladins is the way to go personally. I was thinking more along the line of making it like Hungering Cold. Have it cost RP to cast with a 30 second CD. Maybe make a glyph so it doesn't cost RP (or halves the cost) but the CD is increased by 50% to 45 seconds (reduced back to 30 with talents). The damage would need to be nerfed so DPS DKs couldn't abuse it but it would give us an on demand ability to pick up multiple mobs without having to wait for runes to refresh or blow a 5 min CD.

Well, turning us into paladins would have been a constant cost pbae. It was more a combination of the effects of execute and the current D&D. The fast ticking was to give it an instant threat generation and pick up anything that walks over it.

The problem with turning it from its current nearly sustained into a long cooldown is blood then loses a lot of the ability to control a group, and the problem with giving it a RP cost is that it becomes impossible to use as an opener.

And damage doesn't need to be nerfed, it just needs to have a large threat coefficient.

[Vodamn]

Scientific studies have proven that whatever class I play, will have a large group of people that think the slightest buff makes them OP.

I play a shadow priest. Every time we got a buff in 2009, many priests tried to be humble toward Blizzard and said, "This will make us OP! Nerf us!" without realizing that the buffs are nothing compared to what other classes can already do or have.

I also play a DK tank, and now some DKs are shrieking "Nerf us! We don't deserve an on-demand high threat ability!"

Some people haven't played the truly OP classes or specs in the game.

[Offhand]

But the point is, why would anyone spam it 6 times in a row?

If they choose an IT machine gun spec, their tank dps goes to poop. And all that results is excessive threat. Only the bad DK's will do this, and all that will happen is their dps will be terrible and their threat will be alot higher than normal.

Nothing changes except their dps goes down. Excessive snap threat makes no difference to anything except being able to grab mobs better.

Blizzard hasn't done much to balance tank damage this expansion. I can see a few buffs to prot warriors and that's about it. There's been way more changes in the threat department though with the buffing and nerfing of threat coefficients (rune strike, RF, FFF, etc). Truth be told the tank dps numbers have always been several hundred apart, this is especially relevant when you top out at about 4k dps for a non-gimmick fight.

My guess is they'll have IT only apply the high threat component when your frost fever isn't on the target. Helps with the initial burst threat and doesn't (drastically) increase the sustained.

[jai151]

My guess is they'll have IT only apply the high threat component when your frost fever isn't on the target. Helps with the initial burst threat and doesn't (drastically) increase the sustained.

I don't know about that. With the number of tank swap fights out there, that would be a major blow to the usefulness of the change.