Assisting your DK tank..

Following on from a question last night about priest bubbles...

DK's do not need to be hit to generate threat or runic power. There are no advantages apart from in the Blood Tree to being hit and they are not really tank selected talents anyway.

This being the case, if you are a priest feel free to bubble at will, if you are a dps with a stun ability, feel free to use it (you rogues may enjoy this - stunlocking a tanked mob), in short do whatever you want.. once a DK has threat that is it whether he is taking damage or not makes no difference. The only thing that should be taken into account is to not apply a stun effect apart from sap until the mobs have reached melee range of the tank otherwise they will not be included in any further DK based threat generation.

I suspect for Unholy and Frost DK's even a Paladin bubble will not be too much of a problem since most of the threat is spell based not melee based.. We should check that sometime on a single elite and see if it effects TPS.

Threat transfer abilities (not dump). I'm sure you all use these as a matter of course anyway, the only thing I suggest for DK tanking is that apart from a misdirect pull these transfers are applied to secondary tanked targets (non-skull) to assist in the rapid threat build of a multi-mob pull.

That's really interesting. I am looking forward to seeing the DK in action! Very interesting in an intellectual way that Blizzard has decided to break the old tank mechanics.

As both a rage using tank, and a disc priest, I'd say that (for disc priests) bubbles should be used every cooldown on all tanks.

With the huge boost that tank dps has recieved, plus rage generation from talents, the amount of rage generated from being hit is a much lower percentage of total rage than it used to be (especially in vanilla wow, where it generated the majority of threat).

The only thing i don't recommend for rage-tanks is pre-shielding, as combined with trigger happy dps, this can lead to rage starvation at the pull. While the PoM bug is still not assigning any threat from PoM at all, I'd pre-cast that, then wait until the tank is down about 5k, cast shield, then a hasted penance (which doesn't consume borrowed time) and queue up a hasted GH.

I don't think it would be worth it for a holy priest to cast shield, except as an emergency measure.

I might expand on the whole "Holy priest = damage healer, disc priest = damage preventer" issue in the priest forum.

I have no clue about priest healing, but that sounds pretty interesting Netty. How would your healing tactics be different in a progress versus farm raid?

For 10 mans.

Farm content: 2 healers, any spec, everyone knows what to expect and when assignments might be needed.

Progression content: 3 healers - 1 MT healer (paladin,priest,druid) 1 Raid healer (shaman,druid,holy priest) and 1 OT/versatile healer to respond quickly to whatever is needed - and here I think there's nothing better than a disc priest.

Of all the healing specs and classes, I reckon disc is the most "twichy". The best tools are all instantly responsive, and there's no time spent not doing anything, so you're always looking for the immediate "best thing to be doing next", doing it and moving on. Good mobility (though I need to work on mine!), cheap dispels and cures, and good endurance without having to worry about OOFSR regen.

I think these are all strengths for progression content, but the style is hard to pull off well. I guess I see it as the ultimate "triage" healer - all about saving lives rather than big heals. I've certainly found it gives me the tools to pull off the "impossible" on a number of occasions, when things take a turn for the worse (after this come the compliments, and after that comes the wipe... my focus just seems to go all jelly-like after a big save!).

I'd love to play Runc as disc for progression stuff, but most likely it will all be on farm by the time he's 80, with Netty getting all the levelling-love at the moment

Looks like DKs might be getting some nice changes to sort out some tanking issues...

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13129078969&sid=1

Thanks for finding this netty! The issues raised happen to be what I considered problems at the moment, though the 'feature' of not getting durability loss when killed and respawning as a ghoul I hoped they would miss for a little longer. Ahh well..

The ghoul problem is something that really bugs me. At the moment the talented permanent ghoul has no form of avoidance at all, so in some fights it may go down in a matter of seconds. Dk's don't really have any method of healing their pet... They can use their Death Coil which will damage an enemy or heal their ghoul for a small amount (<2k), but this really isn't practical. The amount healed is too little and the Runic Power cost is far too high (40%) to use on a pet, so generally unless the healer is bored the pet has a very limited life-span. When you consider that an Unholy DK's Ghoul can be a significant part of their damage this is quite a problem for a class that has a mid-tier talent permanent pet.


It sounds good though! Dev's are looking into the problems and fixing them, I get the impression that all classes that can tank but have a few issues are going to get some love. Good news for all!