Death Knights will tank as Blood in Cataclysm

[Vulon'Nah]

I completely understand the reasoning behind these changes. DK talents really are a pain in the arse, it requires a lot more investigation into builds then others who just stick to specific talent trees (For the most part anyway). With the passive bonuses, it would just get worse.

But seriously, I'm going to have to relearn both of my specs in Cataclysm, pretty much entirely. I DPS as Blood, which won't be possible, and tank in Frost, which also won't be possible. I know other classes are having major changes done to their talents...but it isn't like being forced out of your preferred specs.

I know people like blood for the self healing, but really, blood is a very effective DPS, as is unholy. Frost...not so much, from what I've seen. Why couldn't they just take the not-so-good Frost and make it a complete tank spec?

Hopefully they can make it up to us blood DPS by showing off new and interesting unholy/frost talents.

[Marrilaife]

Why couldn't they just take the not-so-good Frost and make it a complete tank spec?

Or rather make frost really good dual wield dps spec, a big come back of "rogue in plate"?

I don't dual wield, I dislike that playstyle, but it's a shame for people who enjoy it how it was treated like an unloved step-child.

Makes me only wonder what about dual wield tanking, will they abandon the idea or give blood choice between dual wield and 2h tanking? Well, I hope they won't make dual wield tanking the only option instead.

I also never understood since 3.0 why frost was supposed to be a tanking tree?
It had emphasis on:
- spell damage
- aoe
- crits
- dual wield
- slowing and cc
All of those was screaming to me "melee version of a frost mage" and I expected it to be directed towards pvp dps, which it really wasn't... shame.

Also actually back then in 3.0 frost was rumoured to be "THE tank spec" while it was the weakest of all 3, unholy was king of aoe threat with the old unholy blight and other tools, and also had much more toughness with stuff like stamina from shadow of death.

So sad to see how unholy tanks got shafted because "they were too OP on sarth +3" they got nerfed to the ground.

[xX ImMo12tAl Xx]

gay i already use blood to tank but i use it to dps too its my favorite dps spec

[Inveigh]

What if they kept Dancing Rune Weapon, but changed its function to something more like "Increases the summoner's chance to parry by (arbitrary)%."
Keeping in mind that in Cataclysm, a 100% chance to parry will still only mean a 50% reduction in damage, an ability such as this would actually only be as about effective as a standard Shield Block (physical attacks only).

If damage reduction is too boring of a talent, maybe the summoned runeblade could behave more like a pet for its brief period with an option to be used as the defensive cooldown mentioned above OR have a whirlwind attach function that would strike the nearest (arbitrary number) targets for (arbitrary % of weapon damage) every (arbitrary) seconds.

This is the kind of thing Blizzard loves, as it is yet another decision that makes tanking more exciting AND makes the talent incredibly versatile. You could use the ability to save your life, as a threat boost in a DPS race or to get control of a messy AOE situation. How more perfect could that be?

AND here's another thing. If the Dancing Rune Weapon acts like a pet with a pet bar with only the two abilities(sharing a cooldown) It would be the visual cue to everyone in the raid that YOU are the tank. Just like you can visually tell that the Warrior with the SHIELD, or the druid with the big BEAR BUTT is the tank, the DK with the big nasty axe floating around next to him is the tank. If you think about it, DKs are the only tanking class that don't give any constant visual indicators of being a tank.

The Dancing Rune Weapon as a pet concept would also solve the problem of having to go through two steps for an ability that would often be used at a moment's notice. Instead of 1. Summoning Runeweapon & 2. Activating function, you would only have to hit "Parry!" or "Whirlwind"

OK, wow, that went on alot longer than I expected. The ideas kept flowing. Anyway. to Summarize:

Keep Dancing Rune Weapon as last tier talent in Blood(Tanking) tree.
Dancing Rune Weapon functions as an ever-present pet. (Would prevent summoning of Ghoul, as a pet doesn't actually serve much function for a tank)
Dancing Rune Weapon would have a defensive(parry boost) ability and an offensive (Whirlwind) ability that share a cooldown.

Thats it folks. Class Development is fun!

This is actually a REALLY cool idea.

[blacktempest]

It would be easy to make the switch in presences. Some minor tweaking and make the changes fit the tree. This is my guess:

Blood Presence - Health Return. Armor Bonus. Uncrittable. Like Frost presence but you lose the stamina for the health return.

Improved Blood Presence - Probably where the stamina will be along with usual benefits. The reason to put the stamina in the talent is for PvP reasons.

Frost Presence - Current Unholy Presence. Fits frost's new role really well with the emphasis on Haste. It will need the 1 sec GCD as it's going to be spammy otherwise.

Improved Frost Presence - Same as Improved Unholy Presence.

Unholy Presence - Magic damage bonus. Emphasizes Unholy's strength in magic and diseases. Probably balanced so only Unholy would use it but they wouldn't use Frost either.

We find out in two days.

[Kaneli]

Thank you Blizzard for ruining my DPS tree.

[Swiftninja]

omg Heart strike spam FTL lol, about time....

[Fenixhart]

If you use pestilence and howling blast instead of blood strike and obliterate in your single target dps rotations, your doing it wrong.

Then why even bring up the subject of Cleave int he first place if single-target was the Concern?

[Maleficious]

Didn't see that coming too,I'm Blood DPS speced and I love that spec,now that in Cataclysm will be gone I'll probably go to Frost DW since I hate the Unholy playing style.
Fun>Max capable DPS for me.

[Malania]

Thank you Blizzard for ruining my DPS tree.

Lolwut? The fuck you not using an Unholy tree for? You should be whining if they got rid of Unholy if all you care about is DPS.

[Shamslam]

That's honestly why they had to do it. DK's effectively had 6 trees (every tree was viable in DPS and Tanking). Not to make it sound ranty, but that's kind of bullshit to the other classes. Taking out PvP/PvE bullcrap (Tank is tank, DPS is DPS, pvp talents won't change that), it's honestly something that needed to be done, to help DK's as well. No wonder DK's got their bad stereotype...they leveled 80 and were told they could tank or DPS no matter tree they went with. It's just stupid.

[The519krew]

will make tanking much easier providing the add some sort of AoE threat generation found in blood i had a hard time with groups compared to frost where groups were much easier to mantain!

[Second]

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.

I am with you on that boat, cheer up mate. On the other hand i totally see why they are asking for tank tree. Too bad it was so complicated to have both in one tree (balance, tools, ...).

[im a cat irl]

this really makes me sad. i liked the ability to have any spec viable for both tanking and dpsing. im tired of all the classes having one cookie cutter spec for every roll. as a DK, especially recently, you could choose from 3 dif specs for dps, and a few for tanking as well. sure some specs were better than others, but at least they were viable and if you were a good player you could do well with any reasonable spec.

[JaimeRavenholdt]

Death Knights had the most variety out of any class in the game. They're able to take a look at all three trees and do two distinct roles within each. This made the ultimate class for people that like to switch it up constantly. The removal of this variety will not hurt the game, but it will hurt the class's potential to be more enjoyable. I don't like this change, and it seems like the wrong direction the game should be going in. With that said, I hadn't planned on returning to Cataclysm as a Death Knight anyway. This kind of homogenization doesn't make me want to return at all.

I say this not because I previously played a Death Knight, but because I feel anyone should be able to pick a class and play how they choose within it's limits. One may argue that they are simply switching those limits around, but to that I would suggest the verb constricting. If they view this as a success, future classes and tree modifications will be constricted as well. While this will ultimately provide an easier game to balance, it will yield too many classes that feel similar or stale.

A good game can't attain balance by flicking a light switch. I'm just going to hope they revoke this change and backwards thinking before they dumb down this game too much.

[Bllets]

About damn time.

The sad part of this is loosing the blood tree as dps, but honestly getting a clear view of the what the trees are about is WAY more important.

Love ya Blizz!

[Aluminum]

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.

[Bllets]

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?

Spec right and/or have awesome trees and there is no waiting around as frost

[Iamsylar]

That's cool i guess..

[renalcul]

At first i was concerned about what this would do to my tanking build for heroics, but then i looked at the tree and the only tanking talent that is really mandatory for Frost DK in deep tree is frigid deathplate, so if that's high up in blood i won't particularly be concerned.