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Patch 3.1.3 rolled in last Tuesday and to many Death Knights it beat them over the head with the dreaded nerf stick. Many are crying foul and making sounds similar to the ones you got in Warcraft 3 when you beat the baby seals into submission. The change was a dramatic drop in the armour granted from Frost Presence, from 80% down to 60%. Was the nerf that bad? What did it really effect? Is it the end of Death Knight Tanks?

The Change

This is the simple line in the patch notes that started it all...

Death Knights

Frost Presence: Armor bonus is now 60% down from 80%.

Immediately after those words appeared the forums lit up. Let’s start by looking at how Blizzard responded in the forums when players cried foul.

We buffed Frost Presence when we nerfed some DK cooldowns a patch or two ago. However, we were a little generous at that time and we have ended up in a spot where in current available gear, DKs had slightly better armor, avoidance and health than warriors and paladins, and cooldowns that were much better.

We were starting to see many guilds ask their warrior or paladin to step aside so the DK could tank the hard mode encounters. This was not an isolated incident for a few guilds -- this was the kind of widespread phenomenon that really makes us take notice. If it was a boss or two that the DK was the best at, we would have just kept an eye on it. Increasingly though it was every hard mode. I will be the first to admit that the community is wrong sometimes. We don't think that is the case this time. The numbers backed up their conclusions pretty well.

No doubt many of you will attribute this to QQ from other players, and I'm not sure much I can say will change your mind. When players don't think a nerf is justified, that is nearly always their conclusion (the other is that we're out of touch).

This was primarily a PvE tanking nerf, but given the number of DKs who were starting to sit for long periods of PvP in Frost Presence, we don't mind at all that Frost Presence will be less attractive in PvP too.

We think there is a risk that druids will take the place of DKs now. We think that risk is small because while druid armor and health are high, their cooldowns are nowhere near the DK level. So we'll just keep an eye on it for now.

If we can get block to be a powerful mitigation stat again we realize that will change the landscape and we'll have to evaluate the staying power of all 4 classes again. For now, we hope this change will put the tanks in a much closer place. (Though if you are keeping note, we would still like to give paladins another reliable cooldown.)

Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

You can find the whole thread here: DK Armor Nerf.

The Issues

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Many Death Knights are left wondering,... Blizzard, are you ever gonna stop messing with us?

Let’s start with some facts surrounding the issue at hand. Frost presence used to only be 60% so this change is in fact just taking it back down to previous levels. Death Knights do have some of the highest health and mitigation levels of any tank. Death Knights also have some of the best cooldowns to use. Is the change too much and in the right place though, that’s the real question.

The numbers for many Death Knights in Ulduar mean that their armor mitigation is dropping from about 64% down to 60%. This means that they will be taking more damage on every hit. One thing that many players do not realize, but that the top tanks do, is that a 4% drop in damage reduction means taking around 10% more damage.

Using some of the numbers above, previously if you were hit with a 25,000 point hit, you took 36% of it. This meant you took 9,000 damage. Under the new system you will take 40% or 10,000. The extra 1,000 damage is a little over 11% more than previously taken. Now think of how often you were taking 25,000 damage hits after mitigation, those hits will now hit for roughly 28,000. This will put a much greater strain on your healers, and make you susceptible to being two shotted in several hard mode Ulduar fights.

The extra armor that we gained using frost presence was to make up the difference between Warriors and Paladins having block, which in current gear is about 2,000 damage per hit. That number is coincidentally pretty close to what is being lost with the change. How high we are compared to them with the 60% instead of 80% boost is substantially less.

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New lower armor levels of a starting Naxxramas Tank

What Blizzard states that currently many high end guilds are only using DK’s to tank hard mode Ulduar encounters is valid though. While many other tanks can have better gear, the bonus armor at the 80% level, teamed up with the best tanking cooldowns, made them a hands down winner when dealing with difficult or new encounters. Many players have seen this, and other tanks started to lose spots in raids.

Messiah’s Take on Things

So where do I weigh in on this issue? Well, overall I don’t think it is as bad as it first appears, although it will affect many guilds attempts at hard mode Ulduar encounters. The extra damage that Death Knights are now taking, puts them more in line with other tanks, were as previously many healers were saying how easy they were to heal compared to other tanks.

I know that many healers in my guild far prefer healing a Death Knight or Druid compared to a Warrior or Paladin. The healers can see drastic differences in how easy they are to keep alive. However, DPS players seem to prefer Paladin and Warrior tanks for pure threat numbers so they can go full out. AOE DPS players all want paladins or Death Knights for AOE threat so they can start area damage faster. What these different preferences mean to me is that different tanks work best for different situations, and that players recognize that. In my mind that is good, and shows some level of balance between the classes, while not all the same, they all have their own spot.

While players may be upset with this change, I think we should hold back a bit. Death Knight tanks are still viable and have some of the best reactive cooldowns in the game. This just means that to succeed in Ulduar you do not have to be a Death Knight tank. Sure, we are not quite as survivable as we were last week, but it is not that bad. Blizzard has already stated they are going to keep an eye on the situation and continue to adjust as required.