GC: "Death knights seem to tank well when they have cooldowns available and take too much damage otherwise. The change here seems obvious – boost Frost presence’s mitigation while reducing the mitigation of some other abilities, especially Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield."

This is very true. I'm sure that anyone who has healed me will tell you sometimes I take no damage, and sometimes I spike somewhat hard. This is a mixed problem however. The first part of the problem is that with two minute trinkets you can roll all of your tanking cooldowns in to each other so as to have one up at all times. The other problem, as GC stated, is the strength of some of these mitigation cooldowns.

Icebound Fortitude's duration is fine. GC mentions scaling the strength of Icebound Fortitude with Defense skill, which would be great for me in PvE sure, but how would that affect PvP? What would a 400 Defense Death Knight gain from Icebound Fortitude? Considering that the typical uptime of Icebound Fortitude in PvP is 12 seconds I would pose that 20-25% reduction is probably a good number. For PvE something like 35-40% depending on the increased passive mitigation should be fine.

Bone Shield. For those that are unaware, when your avoidance reaches certain levels it takes longer than the internal cooldown for most Bone Shield charges to be expended. For example, last night on Loatheb my first Bone Shield was up for 40 seconds, and my second Bone Shield was up for 45 seconds. I think we can all agree that this kind of uptime on 40% damage reduction isn't balanced. My proposal is that Bone Shield offers 10% damage mitigation per active charge. A glyphed Bone Shield will initially offer 50% damage reduction, but the benefit will taper off as charges are depleted.

GC: "Unholy is a very popular tanking spec, largely on the strength of Bone Shield. Expect to see some buffs to tanking talents in the Blood tree especially."

Unholy is popular because of the Bone Shield avoidance synergies I discussed above. It also has excellent AOE threat generation, and single target threat generation. I've been blood before, and the AOE capabilities are terrible. You get Death and Decay and Pestilence. That's it. The other grip I have with blood tanking is that you use a large number of your runes on Heart Strike. The problem with this is that Heart Strike is a melee attack, and is subject to missing, dodging, and parrying. This can lead to frustration while trying to tank a boss.

GC: "Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. We will probably chill its weapon damage and increase its threat"

At the end of any single target boss fight Recount will always tell you that Rune Strike is your top damage contributor. Typically for myself it contributed about 21% of my damage on a boss. I understand that it's a tanking tool, and I appreciate that our threat will remain roughly the same, but I can't be the only Death Knight that cares about his DPS while tanking. Working on achievements like Gotta Go! and Make Quick Werk Of Him are excellent examples of where tank DPS matters.

This seems like a good spot to bring up the tanking two piece bonus again. My initial suggestion was to have it add 10% crit to Rune Strike, but if Rune Strike is going to be toned way down perhaps Plague Strike should be buffed. Our damage will be SIGNIFICANTLY lower with a change to Rune Strike, and I propose since our bonus is based on Plague Strike that Plague Strike is the logical place to make that DPS back up.

What is Plague Strike? It is a small melee hit, and a Blood Plague delivery system. If your glyphed Scourge Strike is capable of providing Blood Plague it's probably not a good idea to balance the damage of Plague Strike considering Blood Plague. A frost DK tank will crit for 850 with Plague Strike, and an Unholy DK tank will crit for 1450. These numbers are abyssmal when a two rune ability like Scourge Strike can crit for over 5000 and deliver Frost Fever, Blood Plague, and Ebon Plague. Plague Strike is the perfect place to make up for the lost damage.

GC: "We don’t like the behavior where DKs feel like they are supposed to drop Death and Decay to generate runic power before a pull. It just looks goofy. We will probably lower the runic power costs of Unholy Blight and Horn of Winter, which seem to be the primary reasons to generate RP. Horn of Winter will probably be something like no cost, 30 sec cooldown, generates 10 rp."

As a seasoned Unholy tank I can tell you that the MOST annoying thing about Unholy Blight is having to be in my second rune rotation to even turn it on if I went in to the pull at 0 Runic Power. It's not too strong of an AOE. I think that it would be wonderful if it cost 40 Runic Power. You shouldn't have to use Glyph of Icy Touch just to be able to use Unholy Blight at the end of your first rune rotation. It's hard to get an idea for the potency of Unholy Blight when you can't even activate it on some pulls. Once we lower the cost, and it goes on roughly the same time that Pestilence goes out we can compare damage contributions.

The Horn of Winter change sounds amazing. I can't wait for that.

GC: "There are some odd situations caused by Shadow of Death that we would like to fix. The talent isn’t designed to let you escape durability damage or rez by zoning into an instance."

Sometimes this ability bugs out and doesn't activate when you die. I'm fine taking the dura hit, but for putting the point in to the talent I would like, for example, that if I die on a boss fight to be able to keep helping DPS for 45 seconds.

GC: "There are some DK sigils missing from the game. At least one of these is tanking oriented. We plan on getting them back in soon (like the same patch with these other changes)."

Right now the most desirable Sigil drops from Heigan the Unclean in 25 man Naxxramas. This is the best Sigil for PvP, and PvE. As a DK at the defense cap this is an amazing Sigil for me. It will up my DPS, and my TPS. I'm not sure that we need mitigation or defense Sigils. The expansion has only been out for less than a month I wouldn't expect every Death Knight to hit the defense cap already. It's a long road, but in the end I'd rather see good Sigils implemented than band-aid Sigils.

GC: "I would not expect full itemization for two-handed tanking weapons. We wanted DKs to tank with dps two-handers (and have their mitigation benefit somewhat from the dps stats). We might add a craftable weapon or something down the road, but only if that felt like an option for the DK, not a mandatory piece of gear. You can also dual-wield tanking weapons if you want, but again, it isn't the intent that is the only way to play. (Please don't turn the rest of this thread into a discussion of whether or not DKs should be able to dual-wield.)"

I don't want to see tanking two-handers ever. It's already bad enough when you see a Feral stave drop and there's only one Feral in your guild, and he has it already. I remember talk of making tanking two-handed maces, and letting DKs and Druids benefit from them. Keep in mind that a lot of DKs (read Orcs) would like to keep seeing nice Axes. The axe Death's Bite from Kel'Thuzad in Naxxramas 10 is itemized nicely for a DK tank. It has hit, strength, stamina, and some crit, and provides 5 expertise to an Orc. I would like to see more axes like this, but no two-handers specifically itemized for tanking please.

---

I think that just about cover everything for now. Overall I see some necessary things changing, and some good things coming. Appreciate being kept in the loop GC.