WotLK Why everybody doesn't like protection warriors?

[DamnOriginal]

You're neglecting another relevant tank trait - "unhittability". Which is understandable because this gets overlooked by most people.

This measures how frequently a tank is able to avoid suffering a full hit from a boss based on the boss' hit table. This is calculated by factoring in the tank's avoidance, including the boss' miss chance, and the tank's block chance. Near BiS-ish levels of gear, this figure for Paladin and Druid tanks works out to be, if I recall my numbers correctly, somewhere around 95% for a Bear and 90% for a Paladin. In other words, 90-95% of all incoming hits are either fully avoided, or mitigated by an amount equal to your Block value, which is usually somewhere between 2.5-3k for a BiS Pally or Bear, or between 6-8% of an LK melee swing. The fact that this kind of mitigation is up near 95% of the time bestows it with EHP-like levels of reliability. With regard to tanking purposes, this therefore becomes a very relevant metric that's almost on par with the aforementioned EHP talents WotN and AD.

I bring this up because while Pallies and Bears are terrifically strong in this regard, Warriors are much less so, being only 72% or so unhittable near BiS. The reason for the gap between Warriors and Paladins is because Warriors don't have a Holy Shield equivalent. Warriors are instead "compensated" by having the ability to critically block, so when mitigation occurs, it's more significant.

DKs, not being able to block, are the most shafted in this area, with all their unhittablility coming straight from avoidance. For DKs most of all, this is not something that can be counted on for mitigation purposes the way it can for a Pally or Bear. So to crown DKs as uncontested best main tanks is misguided.

It's not really "EHP-like levels of reliability" when there's a 1/10 it does nothing, now is it? That defeats the whole point of EH.

I don't think DKs are shafted in any way for not having block as Death Strike in proper hands has a much bigger influence on spike damage, which is what's gonna kill you as a tank. If we assume a situation where the boss slaps you twice in quick succession, the paladin and bear, in the best possible scenario where they mitigate both hits, are going to create a 5k buffer for the next source of damage. A DK with a single Death Strike is going to triple that at 16k, not even counting the fact that block does nothing against spell damage, which is where spike damage mostly comes from. This is why I consider Death Strike to be a much better tool for staying alive when tanking a single, big hitting enemy, it just requires focus and good reactions, something completely absent from block tanks. Yes, block tanks are most likely going to take less overall damage but the DK will survive the spike damage much better, assuming he plays well.

As for whether DKs are undisputed best main tanks, probably not. The only boss where I would consider that true is Sindragosa because of the value of self healing there, as well as other smaller things like slower attack speed, unparriable rune strikes and best defensive cds. You will want a block tank on the two princes and as MT for Blood Queen over a DK as well.

Apart from the point I made, I think it's also worth noting the dearth of DK tanks (among top guilds) going into heroic ICC raiding. Most of the first 10 guilds to down 25-man heroic LK overwhelmingly favored Paladins and Bears. I recall also a number of Warriors, but to my memory, no or very few Death Knights. Not that retail trends by themselves are indicative of anything conclusive, but I think it's something that's interesting to note nonetheless. I suppose you could chalk some of that down to the fact that the WotN buff to Blood DKs came relatively late.

Most top guilds cleared ICC before the buff, which buffs blood DKs the most. Not much of a mystery.

[DarkenedHue]

That's why I didn't say it was guaranteed mitigation. It just happens with enough frequency that it actually ends up making a noticeable difference. Unlike EHP, it falls short of being absolute, but it doesn't have to be perfectly absolute for it to substantially matter. Even with the 10% chance of a full hit, from any 2 consecutive boss hits, the odds that at least 1 of those hits is mitigated becomes 99%. Things like occasional Redoubt procs and the t10 4p, if you're using it, also play a significant role in plugging that missing 10%, so all things considered it certainly is a matter of significant consideration.

Most top guilds cleared ICC before the buff, which buffs blood DKs the most. Not much of a mystery.

As a DK tank, the healing done on yourself is not only trivial compared to the healing received from other sources, but most of the time it's either mostly over-healing, or just superfluous healing that instead just causes your healers' incoming heals to be overhealing. Most of the time that you self-heal in a tight pinch, such that the heal ends up actually saving you, it's going to be with Rune Tap rather than Death Strike. Death Strike itself is a little clunky and leaves a bit to be desired. It's why they tacked an absorb component on to Death Strike's heal going into Cataclysm.

Of course I'm not saying the spell is useless by any stretch. It certainly has its place and an adept DK tank will know how to keep his Death Strikes lined up and ready for when he anticipates a damage spike, but it's not an equivalent to being able to take up to 8% less of a boss' hit almost every time. It's not as consistently useful. It just doesn't work out to be a favorable substitute most of the time. It's a different tool for a different purpose. With a slightly undergeared raid group, going against heroic LK, if you had to choose between a tank who was able to almost always take between 6-8% less melee damage, or a tank who didn't have that luxury but was instead compensated with some occasional self-healing, you'd always pick the tank that took less damage. The healing bases should be covered adequately by your healers. If the healing on the tank is lacking, switching to a tank that takes more damage but is able to self-heal is the wrong way to go about addressing the problem. Rather, you'd be better served adding enough tank healers such that the tank isn't forced to self-heal, and instead just have your tank focus on being tanky. That's the flaw with the WotLK Death Strike design - sure, it's a perk that insures you somewhat against dodgy healers, but if your healers perform really well, then it's a (mostly) redundant tool that you sacrificed consistent damage mitigation to take.

Overall, the 30% self-healing buff doesn't really have that much of an improvement for DKs, compared against other tanks. Particularly when your healers are already on-point with their assignments. Even with the buff in self-healing, all the main shortcomings remain.

[DamnOriginal]

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As a DK tank, the healing done on yourself is not only trivial compared to the healing received from other sources, but most of the time it's either mostly over-healing, or just superfluous healing that instead just causes your healers' incoming heals to be overhealing. Most of the time that you self-heal in a tight pinch, such that the heal ends up actually saving you, it's going to be with Rune Tap rather than Death Strike. Death Strike itself is a little clunky and leaves a bit to be desired. It's why they tacked an absorb component on to Death Strike's heal going into Cataclysm.

This "Death Strike is mostly overhealing" meme needs to go. How much of it is overhealing depends entirely on the player. If the player is bad, they'll make poorer use of Death Strike. It's the only "block" mechanic that actually takes some sort of proficiency to use and will therefore have varying degrees of usefulness to people of different skill levels but it's also the mechanic with the highest potential to influence your possible deaths. I specifically didn't mention anything besides Death Strike because the whole point was to make a comparison between block and Death Strike in a vacuum. A simple look at the numbers will illustrate how much better Death Strike is against spikes, the only thing block is better against is consistent, physical damage, something no good tank should ever die to. It's in no way clunky unless you're a complete potato and if we start factoring Rune Tap which is just an addon for Death Strike that is best used along with it since it doesn't have a global cd, you can create a 45.5% hp buffer between you and death every 30 secs in a single global cd. Not sure why you bring in Cataclysm mechanics either, it was the second worst received expansion in the history of WoW.

Of course I'm not saying the spell is useless by any stretch. It certainly has its place and an adept DK tank will know how to keep his Death Strikes lined up and ready for when he anticipates a damage spike, but it's not an equivalent to being able to take up to 8% less of a boss' hit almost every time. It's not as consistently useful. It just doesn't work out to be a favorable substitute most of the time. It's a different tool for a different purpose. With a slightly undergeared raid group, going against heroic LK, if you had to choose between a tank who was able to almost always take between 6-8% less melee damage, or a tank who didn't have that luxury but was instead compensated with some occasional self-healing, you'd always pick the tank that took less damage. The healing bases should be covered adequately by your healers. If the healing on the tank is lacking, switching to a tank that takes more damage but is able to self-heal is the wrong way to go about addressing the problem. Rather, you'd be better served adding enough tank healers such that the tank isn't forced to self-heal, and instead just have your tank focus on being tanky. That's the flaw with the WotLK Death Strike design - sure, it's a perk that insures you somewhat against dodgy healers, but if your healers perform really well, then it's a (mostly) redundant tool that you sacrificed consistent damage mitigation to take.

Block is going to result in less overall white swing damage taken, Death Strike/Rune Tap are going to give you better survivability for Soul Reapers and healer movement. What kills tanks on LK? Aside from that DKs have the best defensive cds in the game and the second highest EH, which makes them very favored for the role of MT on LK. Bears have more passive EH but worse cds and weaker anti-spike tools. Paladins have less EH than DKs, worse cds and random mitigation, at least bears have some rudimentary control over Savage Defense. The only reason you would pick a paladin as MT there is for the training wheels.

Overall, the 30% self-healing buff doesn't really have that much of an improvement for DKs, compared against other tanks. Particularly when your healers are already on-point with their assignments. Even with the buff in self-healing, all the main shortcomings remain.

On the contrary, it had a massive impact on blood DKs as it double dips their % healing, which single handedly made blood the undisputed best DK tanking spec for ICC. I don't get this argument about healers being on point. If healers were always on point 100% of the time, no tanks would ever die to anything but we know that's not the case. Keeping the tank alive is a collaborative effort between the tank and the healers, disregarding healing tools that can help you stay alive in critical moments long enough to receive adequate healing just because "healing is the healer's job" is potato logic.

[DarkenedHue]

This "Death Strike is mostly overhealing" meme needs to go. How much of it is overhealing depends entirely on the player. If the player is bad, they'll make poorer use of Death Strike. It's the only "block" mechanic that actually takes some sort of proficiency to use and will therefore have varying degrees of usefulness to people of different skill levels but it's also the mechanic with the highest potential to influence your possible deaths. I specifically didn't mention anything besides Death Strike because the whole point was to make a comparison between block and Death Strike in a vacuum. A simple look at the numbers will illustrate how much better Death Strike is against spikes, the only thing block is better against is consistent, physical damage, something no good tank should ever die to. It's in no way clunky unless you're a complete potato and if we start factoring Rune Tap which is just an addon for Death Strike that is best used along with it since it doesn't have a global cd, you can create a 45.5% hp buffer between you and death every 30 secs in a single global cd. Not sure why you bring in Cataclysm mechanics either, it was the second worst received expansion in the history of WoW.

Most of the time it absolutely is either straight-up overhealing, or healing that would've been unnecessary because your healers already had healing queued that would've went off before the next hit. I brought up the mastery addition in Cata (which, to my knowledge, has been the same mechanic till now), because it suggests Blizzard realized WotLK's Death Strike left something to be desired. I do agree that there's an element of skill and fight familiarity as far as optimizing Death Strike usage during spike damage - that's why I said it was a different tool for a different purpose. It gives DK tanking a unique type of skill-cap other tanks don't really have an equivalent to.

Block is going to result in less overall white swing damage taken, Death Strike/Rune Tap are going to give you better survivability for Soul Reapers and healer movement. What kills tanks on LK? Aside from that DKs have the best defensive cds in the game and the second highest EH, which makes them very favored for the role of MT on LK. Bears have more passive EH but worse cds and weaker anti-spike tools. Paladins have less EH than DKs, worse cds and random mitigation, at least bears have some rudimentary control over Savage Defense. The only reason you would pick a paladin as MT there is for the training wheels.

It's not set in stone what kills you more. Soul Reapers, while deadly, happen based on a timer you're able to track. If you co-ordinate your CDs for them right, it could just be that you live through the shadow damage spikes but die only to hasted melee swings, or you die randomly due to something like Val'kyrs having grabbed a tank healer or two. In those situations the main value of the blocks is that it's so consistent. No matter the circumstance, it's surely there helping mitigate damage. Death Strike in comparison is much more hit-or-miss. Maybe you land a DS that was useful, or maybe you use a couple of DS that end up not being too useful because you had a heal coming your way anyway and then you have to wait a while to have it back again in case you need it.

On the contrary, it had a massive impact on blood DKs as it double dips their % healing, which single handedly made blood the undisputed best DK tanking spec for ICC. I don't get this argument about healers being on point. If healers were always on point 100% of the time, no tanks would ever die to anything but we know that's not the case. Keeping the tank alive is a collaborative effort between the tank and the healers, disregarding healing tools that can help you stay alive in critical moments long enough to receive adequate healing just because "healing is the healer's job" is potato logic.

You can enjoy the benefits of Rune Tap and 15% Death Strike healing as any spec of DK tank if you spec for it; Blood primarily pulled ahead as the favored tanking spec because Will of the Necropolis was altered not to have a CD. Again, the buff to DK tank self-healing isn't all that game-changing because the other shortcomings remain. The raw healing numbers go up and that's all, Death Strike heals for 19.5% rather than 15% of your HP but mechanically all the other issues with that kind of design remain in place. Keeping yourself alive is indeed a responsibility you share with your healers, but not insofar that one should value situational self-healing over consistent mitigation. Going back to my example about the undergeared raid progressing on LoD, you would probably always opt to pick the tank with better consistent mitigation rather than one who didn't have that but instead had the ability to occasionally self-heal. The role of Death Strike is something that can be substituted by filling in those healing gaps in other ways - like adding an extra tank healer, for example. Consistent mitigation on the other hand will always be valued unconditionally, not least because you're simply wagering less.

[AluschI]

On the contrary, it had a massive impact on blood DKs as it double dips their % healing, which single handedly made blood the undisputed best DK tanking spec for ICC. I don't get this argument about healers being on point. If healers were always on point 100% of the time, no tanks would ever die to anything but we know that's not the case. Keeping the tank alive is a collaborative effort between the tank and the healers, disregarding healing tools that can help you stay alive in critical moments long enough to receive adequate healing just because "healing is the healer's job" is potato logic.

Death Strike is not the tool you use to save you. Death Strike would only work like that if you could always have two Death Strikes available, forcing you to not use runes at all. Healers already overheal tanks by a hughe amount, Death Strike is just more overheal. It is only usefull for predictable high dmg income, but most likely healers have a workaround for this, too.
Death Strike shines in unpredictable moments, these few seconds where not enough heal is incoming. But you have to be lucky to have even one Death Strike available for this short time period.

[Gnimo]

Both Death Strike and Rune Tap are lifesaving tools that no other tank has, especialy in situations when ur healers are unable to heal u for couple of seconds.
Yes, they dont happen often, but they do happen...

If u are expirienced enough, u will know when to build ur Aggro and when to save Runes for Healing.

Im not saying u can Heal Constantly, u CANT.
35% of total HP Heal followed by another 15% in 1.5sec is not a small thing if u ask me (30% of it u can have every 10sec, other 20% every 30sec).
All im saying is that, as any other tank u are highly dependant on constant healing from ur healers.
As a DK u can save urself in case they slack for couple of seconds or they are unable to heal...

Also, the situations that kill most tanks, especialy when talking about BiS, are eather:
One Shots,
2+ Strong and Fast hits,
No healing from healers.
So i dont see how constant "8%" (for example) reduction on every hit will save u there, while getting 50% extra Health just so healers can finish their Casts and top u to 100%, can save u.

DKs has more defencive cooldowns than any other tank, with shorter cooldown aswell.
They are able to rotate them better and survive more alone cos of it...
Army of the Dead followed by Death Pact and Rune Tap,
Icebound Fortitude,
Vampiric Blood, with Satrinas Scarab and Rune Tap,
Anti-Magic Shell, with Sindragosa Trinket,
and Blood Tap (T10) to back any of those in time of need with couple of Death Strikes.

When it comes to Health Pools, buffed with Kings only, outside of ICC ofc (in Ironforge):
Bears have arround 64k HP as BiS,
DKs have arround 57k HP as BiS (+WotN),
Paladins have arround 53k HP as BiS (+AD).

When it comes to Aggro, DKs will win any other Tanking class by a HUGE margine.
More aggro can sometimes save a DPS which is another great thing...

Im not saying DK is the best tank out there, but he is atleast on pair with both Feral and Prot Paladin, if nothing else...
Why people didnt play it? I dont know...
There is also a Prot Warrior in World First Paragon Kill video, but that doesnt make it a good thing, thats atleast how i see it...

I had the chance to tank Lich King 10/25m hc with all of the 3 tanks, and i felt safer on DK more than on any other, cos i felt like im in control in some situations while with Bear and Paladin i was praying to get healed by healers asap...
Also, in situations when Infest gets out of control on u, u can always count on Anti-Magic Shell with a short cooldown to get that out of the way and save ur healers the trouble.

There are good and bad healers.
When Good healers are healing u, ur only job will be to time ur cooldowns right and just spam those aggro spells. It wont matter which tank u chose to play...
When Bad healers are healing u, the only tank, from my expirience, that can make a diference in life or death situations is Death Knight.

Again, i might be bad when it comes to Bear and Paladin tanking, so my judgment might be subjective and wrong, but i doubt u can do much as a Bear or Paladin when tanking, exept spamming aggro spells and nothing else (im not talking about timing Def CDs here, cos all tanks should know to do that and all tanks CAN do that, while only DK can make decisions btwn heal or aggro).

As for Warriors, i never had a desire to try them out, outside of RDF HC queing area that is, where in situations when i get a really bad healer, i wish i had atleast 1 healing spell in btwn trash pulls... :D

[DamnOriginal]

It's not set in stone what kills you more. Soul Reapers, while deadly, happen based on a timer you're able to track. If you co-ordinate your CDs for them right, it could just be that you live through the shadow damage spikes but die only to hasted melee swings, or you die randomly due to something like Val'kyrs having grabbed a tank healer or two. In those situations the main value of the blocks is that it's so consistent.

These kinds of situations are exactly where DKs shine. You don't care about consistency in these situations, what you care about is raw throughput to keep yourself alive until your raid can stabilize. If we assume 4 hasted hits and somehow the bear and the paladin block all of them then they've created a 10k damage buffer, a DK just blows them out of the water with 37k raw healing in a global while still having 16k more in the chamber, which will 100% let him survive a hit that would otherwise destroy the pally's training wheels and might kill the bear. Not to mention the DK's amount of cds allows him more flexibility in making sure he stays alive without the fear of having nothing for the next Soul Reaper.

You can enjoy the benefits of Rune Tap and 15% Death Strike healing as any spec of DK tank if you spec for it; Blood primarily pulled ahead as the favored tanking spec because Will of the Necropolis was altered not to have a CD. Again, the buff to DK tank self-healing isn't all that game-changing because the other shortcomings remain. The raw healing numbers go up and that's all, Death Strike heals for 19.5% rather than 15% of your HP but mechanically all the other issues with that kind of design remain in place.

No, you can't. Frost doesn't have access to improved Death Strike healing unless you're being confused by the Threat of Thassarian bug that was present years ago on Warmane. Only specs that get improved Death Strike healing are Blood and Unholy and Unholy doesn't have any good cooldown synergy with the healing, while also being locked into offspecing into Blood and Frost and not being able to reach its buff talent while doing so in addition to just flat out not having any equivalent to WotN in the tree itself. The only spec that can combine the most EH with the most self healing without having to jump through hoops and make sacrifices is Blood and the 30% buff to both hp and healing facilitates its playstyle the most out of any spec. WotN buff definitely helped with that as well but the bottom line is Blood tanks benefit from the ICC buff the most out of any tanks.

Keeping yourself alive is indeed a responsibility you share with your healers, but not insofar that one should value situational self-healing over consistent mitigation. Going back to my example about the undergeared raid progressing on LoD, you would probably always opt to pick the tank with better consistent mitigation rather than one who didn't have that but instead had the ability to occasionally self-heal. The role of Death Strike is something that can be substituted by filling in those healing gaps in other ways - like adding an extra tank healer, for example. Consistent mitigation on the other hand will always be valued unconditionally, not least because you're simply wagering less.

Numbers are very important. Blanket statements like "consistent mitigation is always better than healing" are pointless because they don't account for any values. 50k controllable healing is better than 100 mitigation due to just raw value difference and this is much the case with Death Strike. It just has so much more raw value during spike damage than block that it's just better for it. If Death Strike was healing for 2.5k or even 5k, yes, obviously you would take the mitigation but this is not the case, it's not a 1:1 exchange, Death Strike offers triple or even 6 times as much value in clutch situations depending on how or where the damage came from, it allows you to not only survive possible deaths by white swings but also spell damage, add in Rune Tap and the fact that block mechanics aren't under the player's control and it's really no contest. If at any point you have to bring an extra healer just to compensate for your tank's lack of anti-spike tools, you're just proving my point on the usefulness of Death Strike.

Death Strike is not the tool you use to save you. Death Strike would only work like that if you could always have two Death Strikes available, forcing you to not use runes at all. Healers already overheal tanks by a hughe amount, Death Strike is just more overheal. It is only usefull for predictable high dmg income, but most likely healers have a workaround for this, too.
Death Strike shines in unpredictable moments, these few seconds where not enough heal is incoming. But you have to be lucky to have even one Death Strike available for this short time period.

This is a pretty good example of how bad blood DKs think. They feel pressured into using their frost/unholy runes for Icy Touch/Death Strike on cd because they assume they have to be casting something all the time and therefore having Death Strike when they need it has to be a matter of luck for them. They might have 40% aggro lead and they'll still be sitting there, spamming Icy Touch/Death Strike on cd, without any rhyme or reason because they're afraid they might lose aggro. Get a threat meter and realize you're playing the class with the highest single target threat in the game, you have all the time in the world to make sure your Death Strikes get value.

Side note: We should probably stop hijacking this warrior thread with DK discussion.

[DarkenedHue]

These kinds of situations are exactly where DKs shine. You don't care about consistency in these situations, what you care about is raw throughput to keep yourself alive until your raid can stabilize. If we assume 4 hasted hits and somehow the bear and the paladin block all of them then they've created a 10k damage buffer, a DK just blows them out of the water with 37k raw healing in a global while still having 16k more in the chamber, which will 100% let him survive a hit that would otherwise destroy the pally's training wheels and might kill the bear. Not to mention the DK's amount of cds allows him more flexibility in making sure he stays alive without the fear of having nothing for the next Soul Reaper.

It's difficult to know with a reasonable degree of certainty whether that 37k healing was lifesaving. Even if all of it wasn't over-healing, you'd still need to factor in how much of your healers' shortly imminent healing it caused to be overhealing in its place. That's one area where a lot of its value gets lost, which isn't often accounted for. It might save your life, or it might just drift away lost and meaningless as one piece of healing in a vast sea of other incoming heals. You could argue that something vaguely similiar also happens with the blocks, but it's less so applicable just because of the intrinsically advantageous nature of taking less damage. Consistency is always useful, that's one of the founding precepts on which the value of EH is predicated. You illustrated an example where Death Strike's additional healing seemingly gives the tank an edge in living through a scenario in which he'd otherwise die, but odds are numerous other near-death situations probably arise a few times over the course of the fight that favour the block tanks.

No, you can't. Frost doesn't have access to improved Death Strike healing unless you're being confused by the Threat of Thassarian bug that was present years ago on Warmane. Only specs that get improved Death Strike healing are Blood and Unholy and Unholy doesn't have any good cooldown synergy with the healing, while also being locked into offspecing into Blood and Frost and not being able to reach its buff talent while doing so in addition to just flat out not having any equivalent to WotN in the tree itself. The only spec that can combine the most EH with the most self healing without having to jump through hoops and make sacrifices is Blood and the 30% buff to both hp and healing facilitates its playstyle the most out of any spec. WotN buff definitely helped with that as well but the bottom line is Blood tanks benefit from the ICC buff the most out of any tanks.

Oh. Yeah my bad, you're right about the Frost talent. I knew it was bugged before with the 20% heal but I had bought into the misconception that it was supposed to be 15% to put it on par with the other specs. I just double-checked that it's supposed to only be a single 10% heal.

Numbers are very important. Blanket statements like "consistent mitigation is always better than healing" are pointless because they don't account for any values. 50k controllable healing is better than 100 mitigation due to just raw value difference and this is much the case with Death Strike. It just has so much more raw value during spike damage than block that it's just better for it. If Death Strike was healing for 2.5k or even 5k, yes, obviously you would take the mitigation but this is not the case, it's not a 1:1 exchange, Death Strike offers triple or even 6 times as much value in clutch situations depending on how or where the damage came from, it allows you to not only survive possible deaths by white swings but also spell damage, add in Rune Tap and the fact that block mechanics aren't under the player's control and it's really no contest. If at any point you have to bring an extra healer just to compensate for your tank's lack of anti-spike tools, you're just proving my point on the usefulness of Death Strike.

It's roughly in the realm of 2.2-2.8k, depending on the tank. It looks like a small enough number to warrant waving off at first, but even a 2.8k block is 7% of a 40k hit. The block isn't absolute but damn near it, that's why I likened it to being something just slightly short of EHP some pages ago. You wouldn't be quite so quick to wave off having 7% more EHP as a minor, incidental perk. That 7% by itself is on the level of the additional EH WotN grants you. Most of the time, that's the kind of value you get out of the blocks. The point in equating it to EH isn't to recklessly slap that label over it just because - that's a semantics discussion that's less important. It's just to emphasize that it's something that's very valuable for very similiar reasons.

Using Death Strike's heal in a clutch situation is a nifty use of it, but these aren't necessarily always situations you can anticipate, and even then, for it to have been useful, you'd have to optimize a timed landing of the spell where it wouldn't simply just render any other incoming heals unnecessary. A lot of skill and foresight has to go into knowing how to use it right and even so it's still a gamble; consistency is just the safer bet most of the time. At this point it does rather look like we're both parroting the same points over and over.

[AluschI]

This is a pretty good example of how bad blood DKs think. They feel pressured into using their frost/unholy runes for Icy Touch/Death Strike on cd because they assume they have to be casting something all the time and therefore having Death Strike when they need it has to be a matter of luck for them. They might have 40% aggro lead and they'll still be sitting there, spamming Icy Touch/Death Strike on cd, without any rhyme or reason because they're afraid they might lose aggro. Get a threat meter and realize you're playing the class with the highest single target threat in the game, you have all the time in the world to make sure your Death Strikes get value.

Even a DK is not always at a 40% aggro lead. And even then saving at least 4 runes forever, is not going to help to keep aggro. Yes good DKs know when to aggro and when to save runes, but again the moment, where DK selfheal is great, are unpredictable moments.

It is not like you got always 6 runes ready, just in case you have to save yourself. You can improve your "luck" by not spamming like braindead, but at the end it is still luck to have everything ready.

[Gnimo]

U can anticipate dangerous situations if u know the encounter since they happen from time to time, aka they are not constant. If they wer, not even the strong def cd would save u since they have a duration and cd.
Also, u should always have 3 runes up for heals in need, while using other 3 for aggro.

Those arguments are not good as cons...

As for "useless" healing, i dont think there is such a thing.
Sure, to a naked eye u will pop a DS and make ur healers heal do more overhealing sometimes, but in a perfect world, u dont even need another healer but the Holy Paladin perfectly sincing his casts with boss hits...

In situations where u get from 100, to 40% hp in one hit, 15-50% HP can get u right above the death mark before ur healer finish his cast and gets u back to full.

We are talking about situations where 2-3 strong hits happen one after another. In those situations 7% dmg reduction wont save u, while 30-50% of extra Health can give healers the time to finish casts and get u back up...

If 4+ hard hitting strikes happen, no Tank will survive that, im not saying DKs are immortal, but i expirienced situations in which i did save myself with 2 DSs and RT, while dyeing as another tank in same situations... So that self healing does give DKs the upper hand in some situations that can result in death.

Edit:
I know this is the wrong topic and wrong forum section aswell but things happen. I doubt anyone is beeing bothered or has anything against this kind of discussion since it does make people learn and check a thing or two (myself included).

[DarkenedHue]

In situations where u get from 100, to 40% hp in one hit, 15-50% HP can get u right above the death mark before ur healer finish his cast and gets u back to full.

If you are indeed getting reduced to 40% HP with every boss auto-attack, which is what happens when you run a Bdk tank against LoD that's either severely undergeared, or you don't have the 30% raid aura buff, that almost unequivocally shifts the balance in favor of the block tanks. Block tanks would be able to chip a small amount away from almost each boss hit such that they're reduced to say, only 44% rather than 40% of their health from each boss hit, which is clearly going to be useful in surviving, whereas a Bdk won't always be able to queue Death Strike after every auto-attack. In something as over-the-top brutal as 0% LoD, where your tank is literally taking well more than half his HP in damage with every boss swing, the window of possible tank deaths is extended to pretty much the whole fight and that even more urgently stresses the value of consistent mitigation.

We are talking about situations where 2-3 strong hits happen one after another. In those situations 7% dmg reduction wont save u, while 30-50% of extra Health can give healers the time to finish casts and get u back up...

Why wouldn't the damage reduction save you? I assume you're presenting a scenario where you don't take any healer healing. Obviously then the value of self-healing is heightened drastically, but realistically you are probably going to have some healing incoming anyway, and every bit of damage mitigated means your HP is higher before the subsequent hit.

[Gnimo]

Was talking about some situations, like Soul Reaper without a strong def cd...

But i think we are just spinning in circles.
I guess u need to be in those situations with both tanks, where as BDK u can pop some self healing and try to survive before u receive that life saving heal, while as other tanks u can just pray for avoidance rng and heal to reach u asap...

Agre to disagre. :D

[KomodoV01]

why are you even discussing dks in a warrior thread?

[dragonfangv8]

why are you even discussing dks in a warrior thread?

ROFL, made my day :D

[Gnimo]

DKs here
DKs there
DKs everywhere!