Tobold's Blog
Saturday, November 22, 2008
 
Pondering Death Knight faction

I still haven't actually *played* with a Death Knight since release, but I just *created* a second one, and entered the game with him to accumulate rest xp. My first Death Knight was a Tauren, on the server where my level 70+ characters are, and where my guild is playing. The second is a Gnome, on the server where my wife is playing. And at some point I'll have to decide which one of the two I want to actually play.

The advantage of the Tauren would be that I could send him all sorts of twinking stuff, and potentially play with my guild. But as I'm not planning to make the Death Knight my main, it could be that I never get around to play with guild mates. The reason why I made the Gnome is that I have done Outlands with Horde characters three times, and now will Northrend with three Horde characters. I never did Outlands or Northrend with an Alliance character, my highest Alliance is level 60. Right now I'm tending towards the Gnome, but I'm not sure yet. Well, I first play the other characters anywyay, so I still have time to decide.
Comments:
So, was in a group for violet hold with a DK tanking as blood spec, and she out dps'ed both the mages by a wide margin. While tanking. All three were the same lvl. Anybody else noticing really high dps on DK's, even while tanking?
 
One thing that you need to note is that DKs are a pure damage tanker. They have a single skill in their entire repertoire that has increased threat and it is their consecrate-esque skill that costs a ton and has a max of 66% uptime (Which will never happen since that means you not only have the talent but you are willing to spend 3 runes on it every 15 seconds). Essentially they are forced to out DPS everyone in the group to hold threat on anything.

They pay for it to, their mitigation is below every other tanking class. It will be interesting to see how things work out at 80. It seems like it will be a hard balance between threat and mitigation on gear, but I could be wrong.
 
Also, who knows how good those mages were? Today I was doing a few instances with some guildies and a pug where my 74 DK tanked. The 73 warrior outDPSed me by quite a bit and I only out damaged him when we were doing tons of AoE pulls.

Then again my spec isn't optimal right now and I WAS doing nearly 1700 DPS back as unholy on 3 target dummies. That does seem pretty intense. Shame I am not a big fan of unholy...
 
I'm not sure how everyone is measuring DPS, but I suspect that recount has been giving dodgy results for my DK. It may be worth waiting for the measures of DPS to stabilise before judging their performance.
 
It`s wrong to play Gnomes...Alliance DKs should only be human !
 
Yes, see the open sunday thread. Full T6 + new blues Hunter and my well equipped Warlock 5-7% behind a not really well equipped tank. The class is immensely overpowered, see my answer in the open sunday thread.

The class is for sure fun, but it outshines other classes so much, in damage, tanking + doing damage, pvp (14 of 15 seconds silence if you do it right, plus a superb snare, chains of ice), utility and fun that it sells well... but it hurts the game and will annoy many players that are not DKs for sure in the long run.
 
Taurens are the standout race as you can see right away they are DKs while other races can look very rogue like. My DK has already taken over the role of my bank alt with the occassional AV 51-60 match just for the fun of it as I'm trying to kick the alt leveling habit.

The reaction from Capital city guards to the pre-accepted DKs was a nice touch but I couldn't help wishing my DK could have stayed bad.
 
I'd have to say your dpser's aren't very good. Been in Naxx with my own and several other very good players on various DK specs. Hunters and Retadins had a large lead in the group, which was lacking a mage and a rogue (two other classes shown in wws parses to have high damage). DKs in the top guilds are doing solid dps, but remain in the middle of the pack overall.
 
I've done 3k DPS on tank and spank fights, but 2k in my T7 and heroic gear is more typical, while hunters in T7 gear manage 3k dps for the entire run, not just bossfights. I had my realm's first alliance DK on live and also leveled a DK 55-80 on beta; I do know what I'm talking about. The problem with DKs is that they don't scale as well as some classes. I'd estimate that their relative power tops out at about lvl 65. At that level, I was doing as much dps as my rogue was at lvl 70 when he was in Kara gear (and yes, I later ran a 7-piece T6 rogue and a 5-piece T6 lock on live). At lvl 80 their talents aren't scaling well, and most spreadsheet estimates have them well behind some classes once we reach T8 and 9.
 
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