Death Knights will tank as Blood in Cataclysm

[Dergo]

This SUCKS. I love blood dps and the general playstyle. Especially the dual death rune rotation it has versus the crappy blood strike single cycle frost/unholy have. Playing frost especially as dps is like sucking on broken glass.

Why not stick with frost for tanking and make it not suck in terms of always waiting for any damn runes with no RP or being RP capped with all runes available because the rotation is spiky and way too random and terrible?

BTW, SCREW dual weilding, why did that ever get shoved into any tree? DKs are big old sword/whatever swingers the end. The DW/hit gearing mechanics in this game suck in general.

Its so obvious that blood should have remained the physical oriented tree, unholy stays the magic damage focus tree and frost gets a giant overhaul to make it actually fun to tank in. What a cluster**** this will be.

PS, the on-hit removal changes will suck for war/druid and take a year to patch, thats a promise.

Your post is so full of ignorance that made me register to reply to you. First of all, Frost doesn't have a fixed cycle like Blood does thanks to having Killing Machine and Rime procs, so nothing of "single cycle". In order to compare, Blood and Unholy would be a Combat Rogue and Frost would be an Assassination rogue.

If Frost tanking is not as optimal as Blood is not for what you say, it's for its inferior EH, especially now that Will of the Necropolis CD is removed.

Death Knights were CASTERS in Warcraft 2. Teron Gorefiend was a caster, although he appeared with a big two handed mace in the Black Temple. Dual wielding has been "here" since the beginning and you are not forced to take it, although it's better for Frost DPS, especially now.

It's not so obvious if they have taken a different approach. Blood tree is "dull" in Cataclysm terms and will lose lots of talents that will simply disappear. Frost is actually quite cool right now, so it won't be changed so drastically. So, one tree needed to be reworked to become tanking tree and one current tree had to be reworked because it's considered "dull". Hmmm, now this is obvious.

So that's a promise. I want to see you showing your face when you are proven wrong.


Now, on topic, I appreciate this change because it will make balancing easier. I understand that people like to tank in Frost and DPS in Blood, but alas, in order to achieve easier balancing, especially with masteries, this has to be done. I will really applaud the Attack Power debuff we are going to get aswell.
Also, right now it's not fair that Blood has a superior talent like is Will of the Necropolis and the other trees don't have anything close. This will just cease to happen. We can also expect "tank-only" skills so we don't use same rotation/skills as tank and DPS.

To finish, if you look at top guilds/players, Death Knight tanks are Blood, DPS in PVE Death Knights are Frost (DW) and PVPers are Unholy. Exactly what we can expect in Cataclysm.

[Savara]

I love this idea that DK's finally get a clear tanktree and it will be more focussed on tanking as well.

[dannax]

And what about blood as dps spec?!

Did you miss the huge post on the front page in blue letters that said there wouldn't be a Blood dps spec? Not to mention, the hundreds of posts following that QQing about their not being a blood spec for dps?

while Unholy is mostly used for PvP dps(2h though

If I remember correctly, when our DK's got 4pc T9 they went Unholy because it was just wrecking the meters. Plus they were Unholy in ICC up until 3.3.3 I'm sure they're going to change up the spec's to make them all fun and viable. They've said, Frost will be DW dps and Unholy will be 2h dps while Blood would also be 2h tanking but they were looking at the idea and seeing if it could also be DW tanking but they weren't sure it would work out.

If blood gets all the defensive cooldowns from all trees DKs will be way powerful. Anti-magic shild and Ice Bound Fort. were powerful enought, but add Blade Barrior, Vampirc blood + Rune Tap macro, Blood worms , Improved Blood Presence from blood tree and Howling Blast (AOE threat), Toughness, Unbreakable armor, Acclimation from the frost tree and Anticipation (though probably removed with cata talent changes), On a Pale Horse, Magic Supression, Anti-Magic Zone, Bone Shield from the unholy tree and you have some amazing cooldowns/abilities for an overpowered tank.

It's highly unlikely that they will get all of that, plus the presences will be switched around too I would imagine. The trees are getting revamped so they may not even half a lot of those abilities with the new trees, however new ones that could possibly work the same... I doubt they would give them 10 abilities... that would be a bit overboard. They would be overpowered and all the DK tears would dry up but then the warrior/paladin/druid tears would flow.

Again, I understand Blood is "fun" for dps (even given how simple it is, I can't see how much fun it would be) but I think alot of people like it because it's easy and takes nothing to master. It's just like a Retadin for lack of a better example... maybe even an Arcane Mage for that matter. Fun to me is finding a challenging spec/rotation/priority to manage during a 25man raid where you have to pay attention to where you're standing, dps spawning adds and still kill the boss while taking minimal damage because the healers are strained for mana (which I know the mana thing isn't an issue... well maybe in ICC hardmodes but even then, not so much).

[Everlightly]

WTF is actually 3 letters... but ok and as far as the rest of this post, you're just doing it wrong. Delete away IMO, it's for the best.

And you are just a troll mon!!

[Snikeren]

I like turtles.

[Dedal]

This sounds like something a high-end raid DK tank would like, but people with DK alts who don't try to min-max and just play what's fun for them will NOT like. I belong in the latter category, and am very sad to see frost tanking die.

Totally aggree.
I have a tankadin main, and made a DK to be primarly blood dps, but dual speccing into DW frost tank.
As DK tank I really enjoy how it is such a damn different tanking style, and the option of using two weps. I'll regret lvling it and spending all the gold and ending up casting it aside.

Don't think I'll be satisfied by switching DW to dps, since I already have a rogue... meh.

The change makes sense, but an unfortunate outcome for Blood being the tanking tree.

[Sephira]

well thats... interesting

[Deleted]

Screw Blizz. Have been blood dps since day 1, don´t want to go unholy or frost.. Guess the DK is getting benched in Cata

[G l o w y r m]

This is a sad day. I always had 2 different tanking specs on my dualspec, for fresh feeling and different fights.

R.I.P. DK tanking.

More like...WELCOME DK TANKING, GLAD YOU COULD FINALLY MAKE IT!

Great direction with the class, all reasonably intelligent DK's should see that.

[Sollace]

If blood gets all the defensive cooldowns from all trees DKs will be way powerful. Anti-magic shild and Ice Bound Fort. were powerful enought, but add Blade Barrior, Vampirc blood + Rune Tap macro, Blood worms , Improved Blood Presence from blood tree and Howling Blast (AOE threat), Toughness, Unbreakable armor, Acclimation from the frost tree and Anticipation (though probably removed with cata talent changes), On a Pale Horse, Magic Supression, Anti-Magic Zone, Bone Shield from the unholy tree and you have some amazing cooldowns/abilities for an overpowered tank.

Blade Barrier is a passive reduction not a cd
Blood worms is frankly a terrible talent for tanks as it eats up aoe heals in fights with alot of aoe damage
Tanks dont spec for Imp Blood Pres , it just isnt worth the talent points.
Toughness , all tanks have this. I dont see the problem with moving it to blood as its a low tier talent anyway.
UbA is likely to be changed to a dps cd for frost dks
Howling blast is a vital frost spell and will NEVER be moved to blood , that would make no sense at all.
On a Pale Horse is a pvp talent , plain and simple and its unlikely the magic damage reduction talents of unholy would be moved. It would be to much of a nerf to dk pvp.
Besides those i pointed out , some of the on use cd's will be moved to blood.

[scoobysnacks]

Arrrrrrrrgh no! Blood is by far my favorite Death Knight tree. I can't stand tanking, so I can't help but feel I've wasted a lot of hours in my life on nothing. Abysmal decision.

[Unahim]

More like...WELCOME DK TANKING, GLAD YOU COULD FINALLY MAKE IT!

Great direction with the class, all reasonably intelligent DK's should see that.

This man got it right!

I'm a DK tank and I've been begging for a change like this for a long, long time now.
Why? Well, now we can finally be rid of the agony that was being overpowered one patch and then underpowered the next simply because it was too much for Blizz to balance it all.
Next to that, I can finally get tank specific gameplay instead of a slightly altered DPS rotation.
Thanks blizz!

[Jackielope]

Hmm, shame they couldn't have done what they did for Ferals.. Cat form gets different mastery than Bear form. Yes it may have been "clunky" to have a different Mastery effect for each presence, but it would at least have been more interesting too.

I'm not really concerned about this to be honest though. I can play it all, no matter what they do to it.

[Unahim]

Also, it's weird when people say they don't like any of the other trees because of their gameplay, when it is likely that that gameplay will be quite changed.

[verolinna]

As i tried to explain to people multiple times before in my guild their's an old saying "their's more than one way to skin a cat" however where i live they sometimes say "yes but my way leaves more meat on it" as a retort to shut smartasses up.

Their will always be a clean way of doing things and a million other options that just get the job done, even with this change you will get complete nutjobs that insist upon trying to tank as unholy or frost because it will "sort of" work.

I am glad of this change because tanking in relation to the metaphor is a dead cat, deathknights have always gotten the job done but it's been so messy people only bring us in if the other tanks can't do it the clean way and i think that sucks and it happens whenever you do something unique.
The same thing happens with resto druids however most of the time boss fights are laughably easy for them and challenging to the other healers because Blizzard don't want to scare off the small number of druid players.

[Ironscroll]

:O great changes!!! I love the DK playstyle but always felt the tanks were lacking the over all Utility of the other tanks. My DK is coming out of retirement

[Amarosos]

Shoot, and just when I'm truely enjoying my Frost 2H tanking! (...yeah you heard me!)

Reckon it's a good thing though, to i.e. be able to combine such talents as Frigid Breastplate (F), Magic Supression (U) and hopefully Unbreakable Armor (F) with all the moistness that Blood offers, in terms of more Stam/Spell Deflection/WotN etc. And although I've never had the heart to tank as Unholy, popping an Anti-Magic Zone (U) would just be plain awesome.

However I'm hoping we'll still have the chance to exchange the bigstick with two minor whips - as they are adding slow One-handers with Strength. Threat of Thassarian (F) moved to the lower Frost-tiers maybe.

Either way. More defensive abilities and overall threat, thank you Blizz! <3

...I will miss Howling Blast though! Best pack-smacker EU.

[Slizergiy]

Well thats sure is going to make things more intresting. When these changes come into effect, we will have alot of practicing to do to see how well we get along with the new Blood tanking spec.

[zapa]

Nice, now they might stop changing DK stats and play style in every single patch. Because the idea of "3 specs for both roles" was good, but changing DK stats-playstyle in every patch its annoying.

So good news, for me

[Korbu]

Never have been really fond of Blood Tanking, just doesn't seem a good choice taking the health generation of Blood over the damage mitigation of Frost, especially considering it's the Healer's job to heal you. Healing yourself makes the Healer's job easier, but so does taking less damage.
Makes more sense to me for Frost to be the tank spec than Blood. Make Icebound Fortitude a Frost talent, and that right there will make Frost undeniably better at tanking than Blood. Also move all the DW talents to Unholy, since even Unholy Presence is about speed. DW Tanking, are you serious? You must really love the repair bills from parry gibs on Festergut when he has 3 stacks of Inhaled Blight.