Well, deleted my old post here as it never got any reactions (which is logical as i'm the only DK tank in the guild)
Jozef pointed me to the 28/1 talk and showed me my TPS on wowmeter, but i do have a note on that tps:
it says about 1600, but thats a false number!
(
http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat/detail/39637661#threat)
My true TPS lies stable around 2100 (omen3 says) and the 500 loss that wowmeter missed can be explained by the lack of agro spell that it recorded. For my agro the following spells are very important: Runestrike, Death and Decay, Pestilence and Howling Blast. the last 3 are all AoE and never got recorded by Wowmeter. I know i'm still on the low side with my TPS but just wanted to correct that 1600, which looked terribly bad!
Other thing: I'm currently looking up in DK tanking. Uptill now i've done all on myself and chose talents on instinct. I've already found a couple of talents that are kinda useless in raids and are going to be replaced. But as DK is a new class its still in a sort of test stage. those include major TPS issues. the best tanking DK's on the net can reach around 4500 tps, which should give me more then enough for naxx, but we're kinda capped at that and endgame instances are going to need more.
This is what a good DK tank says about it:
[from the american WoW forum]
0. GC: Death Knight Threat needs looking at. 01/11/2009 04:00:36 AM PST
This is kind of an issue that I think needs looking at now, is DK threat compared to other classes.
Personally, I feel Warriors are, by far, the best threat generating classes, with Druids/Paladins duking it out for second, and DK's in a distant third/fourth. The initial problem first stems with "this ability generates a high amount of threat". Currently, there are no DK abilities that do this. Naturally this is because we are the only tanking class that uses all of the same abilities tanking as we do DPSing.
I think the issue rears its head moreso as DPS get gear. A significant portion of our raid is getting to, or at, majority best in slot gear. Their DPS is seriously outweighing my ability to generate threat. I can generally hover around 4k if I have Blessing of Sanctuary, significantly less if I do not. I anticipate getting a lot of responses of "I tank 5 mans just fine" or "I tank in my 10 man guild just fine" and I will agree that they do, it's really at top end raiding with top end gear with top end DPS, that DK threat just tends to not be enough. And even when it is, I still contend that it is nowhere near the threat Warriors and Paladins can achieve.
We'll take Warriors, for instance, totally independent of stats, they have Shield Slam, Sunder Armor and Heroic Strike that all generate "bonus threat", that are independent abilities. You also factor in abilities like Revenge and, particularly, Damage Shield, and Warriors get a huge a much bigger bonus to threat while tanking than DK's do, though this may change abit with the changes to Rune Strike in the upcoming patch. Then they have other abilities like Shockwave and Concussion Blow that scale better with gear than DK tanking abilities do, due to their relatively low AP scaling since they are DPS abilities as well as tanking abilities (meanwhile Shockwave and Concussion Blow gain 75% of AP iirc).
One of the things that I've begun to become significantly aware of is just how dependent on I am on Blessing of Sanctuary to build threat. The extra Runic Power for Rune Strikes is very necessary, and it seems like Blessing of Sanctuary is too powerful and essentially becomes a crutch for DK's, and it benefits them far more than any other tank, because we don't generally RP nearly as far as the Rage generating classes do.
greets ^^
Daredha
The problem with DK tanks is relatively multi-faceted.
1) Burst threat. The natural order of DK tanking is applying your diseases, as (obviously), every spec and nearly every ability benefits from having diseases applied. Frost and Unholy even have talents that further this, though there is enough incentive to apply your diseases regardless. The down side of this, is in no spec do Icy Touch and/or Plague Strike really do enough damage to front-load threat the way other classes can, and you're generally looking at 3-4 GCD's to generate the same amount of threat that other tanking classes can in their very first GCD. This leads to a similar problem, at least versus Warriors, in AoE tanking, as with Shockwave and Thunderclap not requiring any debuff setup, and all doing instant damage, Warriors can -quickly- generate a lot of AoE threat, and after that, can easily sustain it practically due to damage shield alone, and hammering Thunderclap on cooldown. DK's and Paladins suffer from a relative lack of front-loading AoE threat too, and Druids can, but their conal method is very inferior for AoE tanking.
What would I suggest for this?
Well, really, there are a couple of things. First, I think we need to actually get some abilities made with tanking in mind. It creates balance nightmares between PvP, DPS, and PvE trying to have us do enough damage to hold enough aggro tanking. My initial suggestion would be an ability that does a decent amount of damage, "Generates a high amount of threat", and applies both diseases, costing a F/U. Put it on a 20, 30 sec cooldown so it's not spammable and used to keep your diseases up, but that it can make its way into a DK's tanking arsenal every couple of rotations, the same way Concussion Blow does to a Warrior. This serves well for AoE tanking as well, as it's one less GCD to spread all of our diseases. I'm not sure the exact mathematics you would have to apply to it for it to be not-an-appealing DPS ability (though you certainly can make it that) but I'm sure it's possible.
2) Sustained TPS.
Even once you get past the initial threat phase, DK's just don't sustain as much threat as other tanks, and bordering on the line of not generating enough TPS to stay above the DPS, or at least not without the DPS having to hold back, or exert a level of effort and cooldown management that they have to with other tanks, making DK's substantially inferior on DPS-race fights, and really on a significant numbers of encounters.
I think, as I said before, one of the major problems is that our scaling of our threat in tank gear does not match the way it works on other t
This was written pre-patch, but the patch has only solved a bit, mostly by adjusting the tooltips. I'm still working on it and i am determined to reach that 4500 atleast, but i'd just want to ask a bit of patience as this class is a bit confusing in its tanking build. one example: i can tank with every talent tree! that makes it really hard to chose the right stuff.
gonna test some new talent builds in the week of 9 feb, as my exams are coming up next week.
