Hmmm... nails in the coffin to diseaseless tanking? (4.0.6)

[Deleted]

5 Mans weren't the focus of my posts. I don't even care about 5 mans. Blizzard barely cares about 5 mans. Yes, they make sure stuff works in 5 mans, but stuff is balanced for raiding environments, and in Raids plenty of setups have others that supply these Debuffs.

Oh wait, let me guess. You don't Raid, so nobody Raids.

Don't feed da Troll Mon

[Venziir]

Last time they said they don't care about Diseaseless. Now they suddenly care?

And instead of doing something smart, like reducing Outbreak CD they just buff Disease Damage to show us how much they "care"?

Right. Big gaping chasm of No.

With Diseases themselves dealing so ridiculously small damage that Frost even gets off on using Outbreak - Howling Blast and never using Plague Strike to refresh Blood Plague for a DPS loss that's so irrelevant nobody even notices it. Yeah, big part of the gameplay.

The only true Disease Spec is Unholy. Unholy is basically Diseases and Minions. Frost is Frost damage. Harsh, cold freezing mutilation. Blood is Self-Healing and Survivability.

They'd be better off just giving up and switching Frost to Single-Disease, why do you think they reverted the Blood Strike change that they'd done in Beta? Why do you think Virulence provides Disease Damage? They're trying to make them friendlier by forcing DPS to Spec for more damage, while the Tank ones still deal so shitty little horrible Damage the difference is minimal. We don't have the points for Virulence. We Sub-Spec Frost for Lichborne, 31 + 6. Most people go for the free Interrupts. At max, you'll get 2/3 Virulence at the sacrifice of another Death Strike per-minute if you want to keep Diseases up. With 0/3 Epidemic its 21 second Diseases.

---------- Post added 2011-01-12 at 11:23 AM ----------

Since people with IQ to Sub-Zero still play WoW, yes.

That wasn't my point champ, my point was that Death Knights are designed to use their diseases, hence all their attacks benefit from a diseased target. Now, the fact that it just doesn't work that way, is something else.

[Deleted]

Sure, but we also used to interact with them last Expansion. Currently they're more of a minor irrelevant part of our play than anything.
Blood: Some use IT when necessary.
Frost: Rolls Howling Blast-spam-refresh for FF, never thinks about it. Outbreaks Blood Plague and forgets about it.
Unholy: Even worse. Rolls Outbreak, then spams FeS to extend duration until next Outbreak.

Brainless. Free damage basically.

[Deleted]

I know this is not innovative, and possibly been suggested many times before, but I'd like to see a talent in blood that made Heart/Death Strike behave like Festering Strike, increasing the duration of disease, up to around the CD of Outbreak

[Omedon]

I know this is not innovative, and possibly been suggested many times before, but I'd like to see a talent in blood that made Heart/Death Strike behave like Festering Strike, increasing the duration of disease, up to around the CD of Outbreak

Indeed, any variation on "all tanks need (in most situations) to apply diseases is outbreak" would be the last piece of the puzzle. The biggest point that team pro-diseaseless has going for them is the idea that every frost and unholy rune should be saved for DS. Currently, Blizz's strategy seems to be to "downplay" DS somewhat so we won't mind using those runes to apply debuffs whose proactive mitigation would equal or exceed the survivability of that one lost DS per minute, but it's a hard thing to quantify.

To be frank, nerfing mastery/DS isn't the answer (unless it's just being done beecause we're OP... which we are) to making us use those runes on diseases, because as long as there's mastery on your gear (and there always will be), there'll always be only one way to use it, and so DS will always be vastly important, regardless of how much they turn the knob in either direction. We'll never be "deathstrikeless".

I hope Blizz takes that last step, heck put it deep in the tree, add it to a core talent, make it a passive of the spec, I don't care: stretch outbreak, and everything clicks into place.

[Deleted]

If they want to even out Disease and Diseaseless while leaving both they need to remove the damage increase from having Diseases up and give us a way to reduce the Outbreak Cooldown by 30 seconds. Then you can choose: Diseases, or no Diseases. Gain is more damage with no losses.

Long as IT and PS use Frost and Unholy Runes and Death Strike does as well, it'll be a loss to use them with the current Death Strike design.

[edmorte]

Blizzard has already said it might be ok to diseaseless tank trash but they stated that they didnt want it to be the way a DK tanks a boss which is what they are trying to accomplish...

Players never read the posts about the classes.

When ppl said diseaseless tank is possible GC said: "We'll see". DK's were not suposed to tank without diseases.

Why do you roll a class if you don't like the mechanics?

[Omedon]

Players never read the posts about the classes.

When ppl said diseaseless tank is possible GC said: "We'll see". DK's were not suposed to tank without diseases.

Why do you roll a class if you don't like the mechanics?

Precisely.

[Leben]

Good. Diseaseless tanking was the most bored Ive ever been with my DK tank. I hated basically being forced to go diseaseless because of the lack of burst threat at the start of boss fights. Counted the days until Cataclysm got released and made sure I was using diseases all the time since.

[Deleted]

In the case of "diseaseless Blood," we don't have a problem if tanks choose to sacrifice some of their threat generation for a simpler rotation or other benefits. It doesn't bother us unless ignoring diseases becomes the only reasonable way to play (and with Outbreak available in Cataclysm, applying diseases is even easier). When dps specs were ignoring diseases, we made changes, because the whole DK rotation was based on applying diseases. That's true to a much lesser extent for tanks, but we try to have pretty simple rotation for tanks anyway because they have a lot of other things to worry about and are often having to deal with very dynamic situations compared to what a PvE dps DK might be doing.

A lot of the concerns about diseaseless Blood play make a few assumptions:

-- Someone else is providing the tanking debuffs (presumably without a major dps hit).
-- You can AE tank fine without diseases.
-- You won't use Outbreak.
-- Your threat generation will be fine without diseases (or at least the trade off will be worth it).

Those are all risks, but I don't think there is enough evidence yet how they will all play out at 85. We're still a long way from the diseaseless dps rotations of yore. If they do all turn out to be true, to the extent that skipping diseases becomes the typical way that tanking DKs play, then we're likely to do something. Something could include giving Heart Strike or Death Strike slightly more dependent on diseases.

Recall however that we changed things to their current state because too much ramp up time for a tank can be really painful. You don't want to have to get all your diseases up before you start generating decent threat, and when DKs are balanced around so much self-healing, you can't be expected to always have time to get diseases up when you really need that Death Strike heal. Perhaps there is room to come down a little. We'll see how things play out.

If they wanted to break Diseaseless they'd have done so a lot more effectively.

Besides that, this isn't about mechanics. This is about the Survivability nerf from using IT - PS instead of an additional Death Strike, and that's assuming you have 2/3-3/3 Epidemic, which a lot of Specs don't have. If you're 0/3-1/3 you have to use up two Death Strikes to keep IT - PS up, which is an even bigger Survivability loss.

I can't stress this enough, Diseaseless was created because of the Survivability loss from using IT - PS now that Death Strike isn't Disease-bound anymore. It has nothing to do with avoiding to keep up DoTs, Extra Threat/Damage or anything of the sort. Maybe that's what some people use it for, but the intent behind it's creation was to maximize Survivability, not to be an Arms Death Warrior or Retardin or whatever else the hell you want.

[DragonFireKai]

All I have to say is that if ya'll find your AoE debuffs to be so inconvinient, my prot pally will happily take them off your hands for you.

[Deleted]

The current diseaseless tanking is kinda silly anyway, considering wholy DK is more or less based on diseases.

[Omedon]

All I have to say is that if ya'll find your AoE debuffs to be so inconvinient, my prot pally will happily take them off your hands for you.

And this goes to show that even non DKs understand DKs better than some DKs do

Oh but wait, debuffs are someone else's problem though, haven't you heard? Buck passing's all the rage! *eyeroll*

Also, I'm going to laugh my ass off if the next change ties DS to diseases again. Meaning its healing, and shield.

[Warhunt]

If they wanted to break diseaseless they would have put the disease reliability back into DS. They didn't (although that could be becasue DS would then become the most insanely overcomplicated single move in WoW).

All they did was make the decision a SLIGHT bit harder to decide, with neither way really comparing.

The real argument however can't really be decided. As diseaseless has more survivability, disease has more threat/damage. Theydon't compare. If threat becomes an issue people will naturally switch back to diseases I reckon.

(As a side note, LOWER Blood Presence passive threat buff - 30% of current amount will be ok (rough guess), and make Bone Shield also causes 20% extra threat whilst up (initial agg). This would make disease MUCH more attractive, however some tanks would still be tempted by Diseaseless cos of survability. Which is where the class should be I reckon)

[Deleted]

Thing is they've balanced Threat for the long run. By the final Tier we're expected to have to work for Threat, so they're not doing Threat nerfs. That's the Vengeance design. Personally don't like it but anyway.

Easier change than Bone Shield would be to just halve DRW's cost, as we've requested since Beta. With 30 RP we can do HoW (10) and Death Strike (30). Done. Easy. 12 seconds of 50% extra Threat.

[Il Impiccato]

I don't see this as a huge nerf to diseaseless tanking at all. 30% increased damage sounds appealing but I feel like diseases numbers being as low for us as they are, it really isnt that significant of an increase. Also when did having Scarlet Fever be requirement for us to tank? Its a great debuff but other classes can bring it and it isn't exactly gonna mean an instant wipe should you not have it in your raid group. Also why is no one else happy that Blood Shield bubbles can stack now?...Oh wait thats right. The sky is falling. My fault.

[Avatar Killer]

Players never read the posts about the classes.

When ppl said diseaseless tank is possible GC said: "We'll see". DK's were not suposed to tank without diseases.

Why do you roll a class if you don't like the mechanics?

i know my point was that people do what they want regardless of what they should do, hence the reason there are still DW tanks out there.

[Warhunt]

Thing is they've balanced Threat for the long run. By the final Tier we're expected to have to work for Threat, so they're not doing Threat nerfs. That's the Vengeance design. Personally don't like it but anyway.

Easier change than Bone Shield would be to just halve DRW's cost, as we've requested since Beta. With 30 RP we can do HoW (10) and Death Strike (30). Done. Easy. 12 seconds of 50% extra Threat.

Don't exactly disagree but that would make the pull very clunky. The Shield is pre buffed and that is primarily the reason I would suggest that as opposed to your idea. Althoguht shield would drop on a large group almost before pulling off one CD. Meh, tom-A-toes tom-AR-toes i guess.

And is easily recastable throughout the fight (on a more regular basis than DRW)

[Deleted]

Would probably work on both, either/or with some tweaking, although with Bone Shield they'd probably have to dump the Damage portion of it. +2% Threat is nothing, we'd need +30% or +50% for it to be anything decent so we'd lose the +2% Damage. Sure, minor. With DRW though no such loss.

[Avatar Killer]

Would probably work on both, either/or with some tweaking, although with Bone Shield they'd probably have to dump the Damage portion of it. +2% Threat is nothing, we'd need +30% or +50% for it to be anything decent so we'd lose the +2% Damage. Sure, minor. With DRW though no such loss.

not to mention that there is a big gap in being able to use bone shield based on the 2 second rule and 4 bones that's 8 seconds constant hits and 52 seconds of not having it on. if you meant the damage increase based on that then yes. because 2% is OP atm which is why blood tanks so so much more damage than even the top dps... wait... they don't.