Death Knight Single Target Threat Being Addressed
For many of you tanking DKs you may have noticed how sometimes single target threat can be a challenge. GC has posted that the issue is being looked at and one bug has already been found and is being hot fixed (presumably with today’s maintenance).
GhostcrawlerWe’re looking at the issue since players have brought it up. However, we are not hearing widespread feedback from across the board that DKs are struggling to maintain single-target threat. That is what makes me wonder if something else is going on, like it only occurs with some gear choices for example.
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If I am summarizing this thread, it appears most of the concern is about single-target threat vs. well-geared dps, especially against slow-swinging or magic-using bosses who don’t proc Rune Strike as often. Groups with reliable BoSanc don’t notice the problem as much.
I would compare yourself to warriors more than paladins, since the next patch removes the threat of Light, which sometimes grants paladins crazy numbers.
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We are looking into this issue and found one bug that we are hotfixing.
I will attempt to explain:
Most auras go away when you die, but some don’t. Frost Presence and Defensive Stance have some effects that go away and some that do not (this is the bug). It ends up that a DK who dies loses some of the threat bonus from Frost Presence, but doesn’t get it back when he comes back to life because the game thinks Frost Presence is still active and doesn’t attempt to reapply the buff. If you change presence from Frost to something else and back, then all the buffs get reapplied correctly, but most tanks probably aren’t doing that.
So it’s entirely possible that if you die and come back without changing presences that you have just gimped your threat generation. You aren’t losing all your bonus threat generation. You are basically losing the amount that we gave all tanks to compensate for pulling Blessing of Salvation out of the game.
If all of that confuses you, the take home message is we fixed a bug where your threat would be low after dying. Again, by the time you read this, the bug should have been hotfixed.
It is likely this bug was also affecting warriors in Defensive Stance and the hotfix will catch that too. It was not affecting paladins or druids because their spells work differently.
We don’t know if this is the entire issue with DK (and possibly warrior) threat being low, but it should help, especially if you ever die while raiding. Some of the guilds who are seeing this problem have very high dps, which implies they have experienced the content a lot and might not be dying that much.
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hmm…im a MT/OT in our guild, and yeah everyone i know and speak with on my server says DK’s has threat issues, and i experience it myself often, any palatank can go and snatch my target without trying to hard, and in pulls i basically have to say “give me 5 sunders before dps”, yesterday i experienced i took the target off our warrior tank (MT) without taunting, that makes me think, our TPS once we have gone thru our rotation is not pro, but decent, but in pulls we lack a instant high threat ability that can make the dps go right away, i never had problems on my prot pala in TBC, and our pala tank dont have any problems now, neither do our warriors when they pull, but me and the other dk’s seem to have to get a couple of seconds to build up threat when pulling.
I personally haven’t had any single-target threat issues. I am doing on average 4-5k TPS. My gear is meh, to pieces of t7 and the rest is badge/heroic gear. I use Death’s bite for a weapon and use the crusader enchant for heroics and the swordshattering one for raids even though I’m pretty sure I could do crusader and still be fine.
Hellemose, what spec are you?
Doing 4-5k TPS is ok if you’re with decent to poor dps (thats about what I’m at), but if you run with good dps then you start having problems. I offtanked vault 10 man for my brother’s guild, and when i had to take the boss i didn’t have any threat issues except for my brother (dk) and a warlock who were epicced out in a mix of 10, 25, emblem and heroic gear. They were pumping out well over 3k dps, but I just couldn’t hold their threat for prolonged periods of time, so I was just put in charge of picking up the boss after he grabs the other tank. I was unholy at the time, and had never had any issues tanking any heroic. Although I never had troubles in heroics, I do feel it worthwhile to mention that on bosses I wouldn’t be as far ahead in threat as I’m used to other tanks being.
Since then, I have respecced to frost and after learning how it works I like it better and can get a much larger lead in threat. Also I have bound runestrike into my Icy Touch, Plague Strike, and Blood Strike, and still have plenty of Runic Power to do Frost Strike whenever my runes are on cooldown.
Also, just to let anyone who gets offended or whatever know, I’m not advocating that frost is the only spec to tank with, I’m just saying it works better for me. (I used to be such a huge supporter of unholy tanking too)
[...] Single target threat has also been an issue for tanking Death Knights. Some have experienced problems with their threat scaling with their raids gear improvements. As the DPS in raids gets better and higher, holding threat becomes harder and harder. It was announced that a bug with Frost Presence was keeping the skill from properly resetting after a death, meaning when the DK died the presence was removed, but the server thought he still had it. That bug was hotfixed and it was also announced that with 3.0.8 Runestrike would be adjusted to be the proper tanking skill it was meant to be. The damage will be lower and the threat increased, which will make for even easier single target threat. [...]
Hey Ghostcraweler, I had many issues with threat as I run with good DPS’s and if I dont have 3 to 5 seconds to build threat I will lose it fast.
My guild’s dps-ers will have to hold up in mid fight (a lot) because they are almost to the point of grabbing the aggro. This also shows by the way that they are good players because they dont chase the DPS chart to say a hey look at me I am a bad @ss. But this makes fights last to long and we might wipe because the healer run out of mana healing longer than they should.
So 2 questions:
1. Can you increase threat with out increasing our DPS more (so it will not get nerfed) so this will not be such and issue end game.
Example:
Glypes to increase threat by x% when you use xxxxx.
Talent that does the same thing.
2. Also is there a good site to see the details on what and how threat on dk’s work?
(this all could be because I am not specced with the right talents to increase threat.)
Oh and 5k tps is on the low end, our pally and warrios are in the 6.5k to 7k tps range.
Until I get good quick threat and maintain it I will only MT heroics and be the OT in raids. I would really like to be able to fill either roll.
P.S. I did not intend this to sound like wine, I do like playing the death knight class its been alot of fun!
Belvader you have a valid point, I can only OT Naxx due to Threat issuses, I have had trouble with low threat against long fight bosses, i just put this down to spec, but i tried a few and frost with some unholy always seemed to work for me.
To use RS to full potential its best to D/W and use rune of sword shattering to get your parry chance right up. But then razorice was always nice for frost spec as a gd dps addition.
Also a good site for DK talents is : http://deathknightbuilds.com/
Also D&D has a nice aggro on AOE mobs but;
1. CD is a pain
2. Rune cost – eg look at a Paladin, theres is mana based, alot easier
3. personaly opinion that it ticks too slow ?
Q. Is Obliterate supposed to be used for threat ? i have always wondered, i found DC to generate more threat tbh.
Same issue here, I’ve gotten pretty good DK gear and still am not able to keep threats up. Lots of impatient PUGs and insults being thrown. Lets see all dps in frost presence give a ton of threat. The only way i can hold multiple threat on a mob pull in heroics is with Death and Decay down, which isnt always able to be done while keeping blade wall or whatver up. I was thinking how blood boil is nto used much it seems but this abiltiy coudl be used to generate high threat in frost as ti hits all infected targets. This is my general conclusion as of my posting date so issues have not been addressed. As for stil a cooldown in Howling Blast, i was hoping to be abe to use to esaier round up mobs. GUess not, at least get teh timer on the button, very confusing.
I agree with this issue I have talked to my other buddies who tank as Death knights I was in naxx Last night and I usually have no threat problem but my group was pulling aggro from me left and right and this is a big issue that needs to be dealt with.
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