There Will be Blood (Tanks)

There Will be Blood (Tanks)
Earlier today Blizzard released information about the upcoming Cataclysm expansion, I have decided to compile all relevant Death Knight Tanking information from the expansion, this info will be kept accessible via the DK v2.0 page linked to the right of the blog. Among the announcements made today we learned that Blizz intends to release class information in the coming weeks for the expansion.

Today Ghostcrawler dropped us DK tanks a particularly juicy post ahead of schedule.

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.

Source

My Thoughts
It’s a little early to speculate, but there’s definitely some possible problems. Most notably, there’s going to be more than a few serious tuning issues. And moreover, I’m concerned that we might end up feeling a little too much like a warrior with a pet. Here’s hoping though… I think there’s a lot of promise in this change, and I support it. Since we don’t know what “precisely” Blizzard is planning to add to the tree for tanking, let’s look at some of the candidates for the swap.

The Suspects
1. Anticipation and Toughness. These are pretty much a no brainer, they’re tank talents through and through. And will most likely make their way into the new Blood tree. These talents alongside Blade Barrier form the backbone of any proper tanking build and there’s no reason to suspect that will change in the expansion.

2. Lichborne I’d really like to see this become a baseline ability. I could go either way on it actually happening. But I’d definitely like to see it removed from the talent trees all together and added as a trainable ability.

3. Frigid Dreadplate is a great passive tanking ability that I think would have a high chance of making the switch.

4. Improved Frost Presence The only “Improved Presence” that a sane tank would want, even if it stays a deep cost talent as is it would still be quite strong.

5. Unbreakable Armor I see this as a possibility too, simply because it’s limited to melee attacks. This is another of those talents I could see being changed to a baseline ability, keeping it in line with Anti Magic Shell (it’s spell defense counterpart).

The Conclusion
With the new Mastery system and other tweaks that are coming down the pipeline this new focus on specific roles for specific trees makes sense. It’s sad that the experiment didn’t last/work, but the current model of tank or dps in any tree was ambitious to say the least. All I ask Blizzard is maintain the flavor of the class I love, don’t water us down, don’t make us Warriors sans shield. We are Death Knights and we should “feel” like Death Knights. The way it looks now, we’re likely to have Blood as the Tank Spec, Frost as the Dual-Wield DPS spec (PVE) and Unholy as the 2H DPS spec (PVP/PVE). It’ll definitely be interesting to see the updates in the coming months, but I can honestly say I’m excited about the expansion after hearing this information. Thanks for reading…