Speaking of Death Knights

kb4blu

I have been recently been running the BC dungeons and have had my first encounters with Death Knights as tanks.

So far every time a DK is a tank we wipe in the dungeons.  We run the same dungeon with a warrior or pally things seem to go far better.

I don't think that every DK is a poor player, but I have yet to play with a DK that can tank well.

What I would like to know is did Blizzard give the DK the proper tools to be a tank or did they just allow DKs to sign up as a tank for the random dungeons ??

Please don't let this turn into a flamefest.  I would like to hear from some DKs what they think of the tanking tools for that class.

 

lornphoenix

DK can tank just fine, but spec plays a big part of that... then again they have made alot changes since I stopped playing, so it could be they aren't as good as they were...

mklinic

When I played, as a priest, there was only one Death Knight that I ran with that I would have considered a good tank. He still required a lot more work then a warrior or paladin to keep him standing, but he could hold aggro and we generally managed most instances with no, or minor, issues. These were all at 80 though so I can't speak to the experience in the BC content.

So, with that said, by far my experience with DKs (again, from a healer perspective) was overwhelmingly poor. I am not sure the cause of this or if it can be attributed to any one thing, but generally, DKs that I would PuG with did not make for good experiences versus PuG'ing with a traditional tank class.

Just my two cents though...

Erythrocyte

DKs can definately tank, some of the best end-game tanks are DKs.  My guess is that if you're talking about BC content that those might be new DKs since they start at level 55.  They're dropped into Outland almost as soon as they're done with their starting area, where other classes still have to work their way-up from level 1.

nyxium

Some whispers that Blood is going to be the only tank spec after Cata hits the shelves.

Wonder how that's going to affect Frost, I reckon Frost talents will still be used, but the majority will be blood.

Shodanas

It's not about the players but about the class itself. It requires almost 0 effort  plus the fact that they start from level 55 and leave their initial area decked with high quality blue gear makes things worse. Players entering the Outlands with a DK are definitely not familiarized with the class simply because there isn't enough time to do so nor the necessity.

When i leveled my DK i went from lvl 55 to 65 in less than a week without grasping key aspects of the class. Why? I didn't had to. I simply picked a leveling build from the web and watched my DK chick leveling itself, it was that easy. That thing went over elite mobs and group quests like an elephant over ants. Sometimes i got the impression that the leveling part of this class was made for apes in test labs.

Xiaoki

The DK tanks you got were most likely not tanks at all. They were most likely DKs that put on Frost Presence and queued as a Tank so they could get a dungeon group faster.

The Paladins and Warriors you got were probably actually Protection spec.

Also, even if those DKs were trying to be tanks they would have had a few problems. Right now there is no dedicated DK tank tree and the tanking talents are spread to all three talent trees. This makes the low 60s levels bad for DK tanks because their spec is mostly DPS talents and abilities.

Lastly, its possible those DKs just outright sucked. Bad players are drawn to DKs because they start at level 55 and everyone says they are "over powered".