Blood will be the tanking tree in Cataclysm
Blizz has announced that the three trees will no longer be both dps and tank. Instead, the Blood tree is becoming the tank tree while Frost and Unholy are the dps trees. They will be releasing more details tomorrow so stay tuned.
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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.
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10/52/9, I will miss thee.
Frost tanking is a lot more fun to play for me than blood ever has been, for me. Spamming Heart Strike for 6 runes worth of a 12 rune rotation is extremely boring (IT PS DS HS HS, DS HS HS HS HS, repeat) makes me feel like I’m playing my pre-wrath prot warrior all over again. (Devastate spam, ick)
I am really hoping they move howling blast back up higher in frost, because it is currently my best friend for aoe. IT PS BS BS OB, OB OB OB with HB proc, and IT (since they made it high aggro) spliced in there to help as needed is my current single-target tanking rotation.
I will learn to play blood to tank with, but I have a feeling that the fun of frost (having procs to watch for, and having a nice toolbelt of talents, including extra damage reduction from imp frost presence) will not be able to be merged with the new blood-tanking tree.
I also think this one more way blizzard is attempting to do away with any form of mitigation tanking (as opposed to stamina=king), but by making blood mandatory for tanking, maybe DK tanks will have a real chance to use Rune of Swordshattering again without accusations of being a newb.
On a plus note, in the last month or so, Ghostcrawler mentioned something about making DK’s less global cooldown dependent, so with any luck that will make some of these worries go away.
I hope today’s update will make all of this more clear and understandable.
I agree with you there, Vilereaver..
This is total BS. Frost, like said above, was a lot more fun. Wayyyyyy too much DPS as well as tanking to be done. I was actually looked for when running 25Naxx and even getting into ToC. Blood has never been appealing. Why Blizz has hated Frost and continues to screw DKs is beyond me. At least they’ll give us a free re-speck (or all HELL should break loose!)
I total don’t agree with you guys on blood boring. I agree frost is fun, but I like blood, and blood is a good tanking spec right now. Yes my dk still has talents spent in frost for armour buffs and I’m not very sure why in unholy, but healers like how I give them a brake in boss battles where I just cast MARK OF BLOOD on the boss and using VAMPERIC BLOOD on me. For the first 30 secs of the battle I need very little healing if any from a healer. My DK is named: VEdorean and he’s on ZUl’ Jin. Look him up on the armory if you want. And don’t tell me that I have no idea what I’m talking about because I’ll I do is ransoms all day and I’m in a 70+ raiding guild. ( srry for writing the long comment, have fun tanking in blood soon!
I definitely believe you know what you’re doing, Vedorean, and I know a lot of DK’s who have tanked using blood since Ulduar and both had a good time while doing well. But with the current way blood is set up, I am just having a lot of trouble making the spec entertaining/enjoyable to play.
That being said, I have to keep reminding myself that the new blood tree for cataclysm won’t really be the current blood tree. I say this to console myself, as I don’t like the current blood tree-but people who play blood now do, and they can console themselves by remembering that the tree they prefer is just going to a refit, an upgrade, so to speak. (For me, this upgrade will be making it playable!)
After seeing the new previews, here is what I like about the upcoming changes:
1) The new rune refill system, which sounds interesting. I like the idea of having 2 sets runes refilling per type of rune. Adding a little complexity to the rune system made me raise my eyebrows at first, but hearing how they want to discourage the current (and ugh,currently necessary) method of “SPAM SPAM SPAM my runes, fit in space between refilling runes to use frost strike or death coil or procs RESUME SPAMMING MY RUNE ROTATION,” makes blizzard sound like they have a pretty good handle on what the class needs right now
2) I don’t like dual-wield frost for tanking. This new blood tree sounds like it’ll be pretty much all 2h, or at least preferable to 2h. To me, this is ideal! Doing away with dual wield frost (FOR TANKING) is very wise. I play 2h frost, but here is why I like 2h over dual wield a) I always end up losing out 1k to 1.3k health, not counting the extra stam from Stoneskin gargoyle, so dual wield hurts my effective health b) threat of thassarian is cool, but doesn’t make up for the health loss. extra threat from rune strike, extra rime procs over hitting with OB with 2 1h weapons? nice, but not really needed. Using a 2h, I have never needed extra threat to maintain aggro- and since the IT=high aggro patch, i never will.
3) Blizzard usually is good at what they do. So I have confidence that the new blood tree will be much better than I first pictured it. I have a feeling (aka hope) that when GC says Bone Shield will be moved over, that it will be changed somewhat. Right now Bone Shield=crap for tanking. Unlike unbreakable armor or a glyphed vampric blood, Bone Shield only ends up lasting about 10 seconds, maybe 12 (for a main tank, that is), because bosses seem to hit every 2 seconds or so these days (I account for a dodge/parry or 2 in my time). But the real place Bone Shield shows how bad it currently is against trash. Any defensive cooldown that doesn’t work vs trash is simply a bad cooldown in my opinion, and I hope that by moving talent, blizzard decides to not make it last for X hits, at least while in frost presence. Anyway, the main point is that blizzard now gets a chance to focus all of its efforts on tweaking a tanking tree into blood, which hopefully will show- after all, look at what they did with warrior’s improved revenge talent! If they can make an ability that was slowly becoming less useful into something all (tanking) warriors want to use, imagine what kinds of things they can do to the blood tree now. (This is great for me, b/c I already don’t like blood, and can envision them boosting its appeal for me quite easily).
Anyway, sorry for the walls of text.
I think for like a higher level skill on the upcoming blood tree should be that we can use a sheid. That would give me such a more easier time tanking.
I doubt they will ever add shields to Deathknights. That is one of the defining qualities of a DK is that we dona’t use shields. Warrior tanks are generally shield dependant – taunt dependant. Pally’s rely on shield and spells. DKs are the tanks without a wall. Although shields would make tanking easier, I think you would lose to much of that defining characteristic. I really don’t think shields are ever going to be part of DK’s arsenal.
Honestly I just started leveling a DK about a week ago (for tanking purposes) the only reason I made this char was to dual wield tank, tbh I don’t care if it’s blood or frost spec I have to put points in, but is blizzard saying that from now on all DK’s have to 2h weapon tank? Because then I might aswell stop playing this char right now… honestly dual wield tanking is awesome, why can’t we keep that? It’s all I wanna do with this class are we now forced to use 2 handers if we wanna tank :S
I prefer frost mainly bcuz no one ever gets any aggro from me but my arcane Mage has pulled arthas from a blood tank
And also for the 2h tanking weapons I hope they make it so we can tank easily wit both bcuz it would b alot easier to find one awsome 2h weapon then 2 1h weapons but also just got my second 1h thanks to the help of my awsome guild (fear of an Orc planet) realm arygos
And srry but 1 more thing vilreaver go look up crakerss spec it’s like 20’s/20’s/20’s it’s a raid tanking class it’s really fun
I think in the long run this is a good change for us Deathknights, it will be interesting to see how it pans out during the expansion..
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