Yesterday, we had a big announcement from Blizzard about Death Knight tanking in Cataclysm; and it was a big one. Blizzard is reversing their long-held “every roll in any tree” policy to make Blood the only tanking tree for Death Knights. Blood will be like the Protection tree for Death Knights. Here’s what Ghostcrawler had to say about it:

We're doing our Cataclysm preview on the death knight changes later this week, but we knew one change risked overshadowing all the others, so we figured we'd go ahead and drop the proverbial Blood bomb today.

In Cataclysm, death knights will have a dedicated tanking tree, much like the other three tank classes. That tree will be Blood.

We’ll go into more detail in the upcoming preview, but we wanted to take the opportunity to explain the reasoning for such a big change.

Why the about face? We actually thought the “tri tank” experiment worked out okay. We suspected there would always be a “best” tanking tree, because that’s the way these things shake out, but we hoped it would be close enough that many players could tank with their favorite tree. When we tried out this design for Wrath of the Lich King, we were using it as a test case to see if we wanted to do similar things with the warrior and paladin talent trees.

A lot has happened since that time. We introduced the dual-spec feature, allowing players to have a tanking spec and dps spec that they could switch between. We introduced Dungeon Finder, which makes it easier to find players who want to tank, and even let players level up using a dedicated tank spec. In Cataclysm, we are introducing the concept of passive talent tree bonuses and we think that feature is a lot stronger when the talent tree has a particular focus (such as damage, tanking or healing). For example, it’s safer to give more passive damage to a tanking tree than we can a dps tree. Above all, we were just spending a lot of effort trying to balance three trees (though it was really six trees, since each tree was trying to do two things).

It started to feel unfair to the other tank classes that we had to spend so much effort tweaking three types of DK tanks, and it even started to feel unfair to the DK that we couldn’t focus their tanking experience. One bit of feedback that really struck home was the DK players who said, essentially, “I look at the Protection tree and I’m jealous of all of the cool tools they have to help their tanking. As a DK, I have to pick and choose tanking talents from within a sea of dps talents.” Rather than have a strong focus, the trees felt a little watered down because they were trying to do so much. With Frost as a dual-wield, spell and runic power focused tree, Unholy as a disease and minion focused tree, and Blood as a self-healing, defensive cooldown, tanking tree, we think the focus of each tree is a lot clearer and cooler.

In Cataclysm, Blood will be the death knight version of a Protection tree. It will have passive talent tree bonuses that reflect tanking. It will have tools, such as a Demo Shout equivalent, necessary for tanking. Several of the more fun tanking talents from Frost and Unholy will be moved into Blood. We will be able to revise (or even remove) clunky mechanics like Rune Strike and focus on letting DKs generate threat with their normal Blood tanking rotation.

This is major change, and we understand it will be met with some disappointment from players who really liked the flexibility, those who appreciated the unorthodox talent tree design, or those few of you who really liked Blood dps. Nevertheless, we are convinced that this is the right change for the game.

More exciting death knight news coming up soon in the preview.

  -  Ghostcrawler ( Source )

I wanted to wait until this morning to post to let this announcement sink in. My feelings on it are mixed. I saw this coming because, as I pointed out in my post titled Have You Attained Death Knight Mastery?, it would be EXTREMELY problematic for Blizzard to continue with the same Death Knight class design and make it fit into the new Mastery system in Cataclysm. A change was necessary.

Death Knights are set apart because their class design attempts to support every role in any tree. The direct result is that tanking talents are watered down and disbursed throughout the three trees, leading to what really are three different tanks. I like the current approach, but it’s not a good design decision. By focusing Death Knight tanking into one tree, tanking talents can be more focused, and lead into a single class role design.

What this all fails to take into account is that Death Knight players feel a lot of loyalty to their play style. Those who have devoted their characters to Blood dps will not be as happy as the tanks to have this change forced upon them.

As we all leave Northrend behind, and journey back to Azeroth for the first time in five years, its best to keep in mind that Death Knights, the iconic class of Icecrown are just one of ten classes. This change, while maybe good from a gameplay view, chips away just a little more from the uniqueness of the Death Knight. If I wanted to play a warrior, Grendaran wouldn’t be sitting at 70 right now. Someone had to say it.

Another interesting question is the presence situation. Frost presence is supposed to be for tanking, but the Frost tree is a dps tree, while Blood presence is used mostly for dps. Blood however is going to become the new tanking tree. The presences seem a little backwards. I’m certain that originally Frost was designed as the tanking tree and presence, however this was changed somewhere closer to release (in fact, I think that I remember this from some of the older expansion infos; not sure I really have any evidence to cite on it).

This is a big change, Ghostcrawler has promised more information on the Death Knight changes in Cataclysm; all of this could change. What’s your opinion on this, do you support it? Let me know.

So I was working on my druid the other day. I queued up for a Blood Furnace to get the two quests knocked out. The group ended up being myself (feral), Death Knight Tank, Priest Healer, a Mage, and a Hunter. As soon as we zoned in, the Hunter remarked “finally!, a Death Knight Tank that knows what he’s doing.” I’m not really sure what the Hunter was referring to, maybe it was the fact that he was using a two-hander instead of trying to tank DW with crappy gear. I, on the other hand, smelled the foul odor of a DeathN00b

The guy’s gear was so-so. He had a mix of tanking and dps blues and greens. His spec was a mess. Aside from the obligatory 5 points for the top tanking talents, he had some points in unholy, and most in frost. He actually uses a little death grip on the pulls, and does a decent job taunting the stragglers.

All is well until we pull up to the area right outside the room of the first boss. He proceeds to pull the entire room; a room that would normally be broken up into 3 separate pulls. The priest heals his heart out, I jump out of cat form and start throwing on hots and heals. Eventually, he just dies because he doesn’t have the avoidance or mitigation to hold them all. The group wipes, and I get blamed for not shadow melding >< . The Hunter then warned him against pulling so many. To which the Death Knight responds “ok sorry”.

We pull into the boss’s room. The Death Knight is a good boy for two pulls before sliding back into his old ways. The Hunter then warns him again to stop pulling half the room. The Death Knight responds back this time with “used to a different kind of heal; sorry”. Now in my mind, the only kind of healer that could heal a piss-poor geared Death Knight Tank through an entire room of mobs are his 80 friends that have decided to go slumming in Blood Furnace because they feel bad for him. It wasn’t the healer’s fault, it was him. He had both the main healer, and myself trying to keep his sorry backside alive.

Following this little exchange, he decided to drop group and the dungeon run quickly disintegrated. I only got one of my two quests done.

Loot Whores

Another disturbing trend I’ve been noticing in my heroic runs is that always seems to be a person in the group that just stands there when final loot is being rolled on. They wait until everyone else has left the group to roll on stuff because once you leave, you forfeit loot rolls. I saw a similar situation like this on my 2 out of 3 heroic runs last night.

I would hazard a guess that most people just click greed greed greed, and then don’t stop to notice if the loot was actually rolled on before making a quick exit to start the next run. I’m not a fan of douchbags that use dirty tactics such as this for their personal gain.

That’s all for this post, keep on raiding and hopefully we’ll see 3.3.3 pretty soon here.

Now that Dual-Wield dps is viable again, many people also want to extend the dual-wield happiness to tanking. There are many myths and misconceptions about dual-wield tanking throughout the wow community. When I heard dual-wield tanking, the next word that immediately pops into my head is deathn00b. The vast majority of death knights which I’ve run into while leveling tend to dps as dual-wield, many don’t understand the trees and assume they can just dual-wield with anything.

On the contrary, as of 3.3, Dual-Wield Frost tanking is a viable, though niche, option. Patch 3.3 adds new runeforges and allows Frost to attain above average threat performance.

The Spec: Frost DW Tanking
10/54/7