Yeah, same with my friend from my old guild. He took all of WotLK off on his mage (left him at level 70) in favor of leveling a DK to be one of the guild’s main tanks. He came back to the mage two weeks ago, geared in full T6, leveled him to 80, joined my new guild, and has now gotten himself geared up well enough that he can hold his own in ICC25. His DPS isn’t up to what he wants it to be yet, but it’s getting there and he’s made amazing strides in two weeks. If you’ve got any free time at all to just chain-run heroics (and it’s even easier if you have a friend who’s a tank and willing to run with you, since tanks get groups virtually instantly) then you can get yourself geared in no time at all.
Sounds like what I use for heroics. One thing that I believe has changed with Frost is that it’s pretty much the “dual wield” tree now. I’m still using a one-hander, like you, but apparently two slow DPS main-hands in the preferred approach with Frost now.
Also, my approach in AoE Frost tanking is usually to just avoid Plague Strike and use Howling Blast to keep up Frost Fever (using the HB glyph). I save multiple Runes that way (Plague Strike + Pest.) which allows more Blood Boils for AoE threat. I have no idea if that is still an “approved” method, but it seems to work OK.
That’s… not at all how I would characterize it. Chill of the Throne, IMO, actually affects Druids the least, since they are and have been for some time now focused on Stamina and Armor. Dodge is useful for them, but because of the sheer RNG factor, you can’t ever count on it. That’s actually why the trend in Wrath has been so much toward EH (Effective Health) and away from Avoidance. (And honestly, Block is still such a shitty mechanic it’s barely worth bringing up.)
I guess my understanding was that pretty much all tanks were focused on Stam even in ToC (unless your were off-tanking Anub HM). I also was under the impression that DR kicks in before the Chill debuff - so re-gaining the lost avoidance is harder for tanks that rely on avoidance more than mitigation (i.e. if you went from 75% to 55% it’s harder to get that back through stats than if you went from 65% to 45%).
You obviously have a ton more end-game tanking experience than I do - have you seen many DK tanks succeeding in ICC25? The few times we’ve tried they got crushed on Festergut. I haven’t raided on my DK tank since ToC so I have no first-hand experience, only what I’ve seen/heard about.
I will agree with your point re: Druids - they seem to be doing OK because the level of EH they can reach is pretty significantly higher than a similarly-geared DK. Again, it could just be a perception thing (or just bad DKs QQing).
Oo, I remember now - I think my husband griped that Festergut (ICC10) was what they were working on when the blood DK was going pop and started saying that he couldn’t do this.
Yup. Everybody’s all about the EH. It just scales particularly well for Druids, because they’ve *always *been about soaking damage with large HP pools. Back in the era of Ye Olde Crushing Blows, they couldn’t pick up enough avoidance to get to uncrushable, so they had to be able to just eat the damage.
You’re correct about how the debuff works. The game calculates your Dodge, factoring in DR, then knocks 20% off that number. So say you have 30% Dodge and walk in the door. You now have 10%, but getting to 11% is as hard as getting to 31% outside of ICC.
The difference is that Warriors, Paladins, and DKs also have Parry, and Warriors and Paladins also have Block. Outside of one role in one fight (and maybe trash), nobody gears for Block, because Block is crap. Sure, it cuts down on your total damage taken over the course of a fight, but it doesn’t really make a difference if you get hit with three 25k hits in a row instead of three 27k ones. So you gear for Stam and Armor, because those aren’t RNG based, and then you pick up as much avoidance as you can when all else is equal.
I haven’t run with any good DK tanks since before Ulduar, which was before they got nerfed from the OP place they were at in the beginning of Wrath. I haven’t run with any DK tanks, period, in my past two guilds. So, I really can’t comment at all. I really don’t know anything about how they play.
I believe Festergut got nerfed fairly early in ICC10 for the same reason Marrowgar did–they were mistuned and were doing 25M damage in the 10M dungeons. No wonder the tanks were getting squashed!
Seriously, though, I’ve run with several good DK tanks (and have one of my own). I’ve tanked both RF and FG in 25, and the only reason we didn’t succeed was that we didn’t have the DPS to down them in time (it’s an alt run, so we can’t count on the uber DPS numbers of our main raid). I was usually one of the last ones up, and easily lived through the heavy tank damage phase of Festergut (with good healers, of course). The only thing that consistently gives me trouble as a raid tank is when they ask me to tank adds instead of the single target boss. That’s partly skill (I’m not nearly as good at adds–I get flustered and make mistakes) and partly just that DKs aren’t generally as well equipped to deal with multiple targets.
Forgive me, BDL, for I have abandoned ye. 
Not wholly, of course. I like my characters too much for that, and I intend to be around on Wednesday night. But a friend recently picked up the game and started a character on Blackwater Raiders, so I’ve been obliged to spend some time over there.
I decided to try a Priest, since that’s possibly the only class I have yet to really try aside from Warlock, but unfortunately it just hasn’t clicked with me in the slog that was the first 16 levels. I know most classes need more than that to really gel (I’m going down the Disc tree and I have yet to get Improved Power Word: Shield), but I’m just not enjoying it. I ran a couple instances of Ragefire as the healer and did okay, but it just felt so clunky (I’m guessing part of that is because it’s RFC and nobody’s kitted out yet, and part is because I’m used to smooth and sexy Druid healing). Does Priest have any kind of game changer at level 20 or 30, like Cat Form for Druids or totems and Call of the Elements for Shamans, or is it essentially the same game all the way on up, just with different tools?
*Please *tell me you used Recruit a Friend.
…one of them says “My Account”, and I’m a little paranoid about deleting that one…
Q
Well, strictly speaking she’s not a newcomer. She’s played on and off on this account for the last…year? but never got a character above level 22 before moving on to something else.
Well do you want to primarily heal, or dps?
For DPS, there are some fun things in the Shadow tree like Mind Flay (level 20) and Shadowform (level 40). That’s how I leveled to 70, and it was slower than other classes (no AoE damage) but I enjoyed it and still was able to heal instances up into Outland.
If you are Disc or Holy – you get more powerful healing spells and another DoT or two, but it’s not going to change much. I would recommend going Shadow even if you intend to do a lot of healing; it’s just more fun.
Is there anything specific you’re not enjoying? The squishiness?
Oh I just remembered - Mind Control can be fun and situationally useful.
Blackwater Raiders, huh? Cool! That’s my old stomping grounds! (Played there from November '06 until a couple of months ago, when I finally jumped ship due to the paucity of good raiding guilds–basically there’s one good one and a bunch of also-rans). Still, there are a lot of nice people over there and I enjoyed my time there a lot. Hope you do too!
Oh I forgot to say:
You are dead to me. Dead!:mad:
Just kidding. Don’t forget Wednesday nights though! Why didn’t you bring your friend over to Cairne and the BDL? Do we embarass you?
It’s hard to say. Squishiness can’t wholly be the problem, as I enjoy my Mage a great deal, though admittedly it’s a factor. I had success with the Druid due to wearing leather and the ability to go plate when necessary.
I think it’s just that I’m not real fond of the spells so far. I know that, talented, things begin to come together very nicely as it does for most classes, but it’s hard to like them right now. The damage spells don’t feel like real damage (my wands are keeping pace very well with Smite, and I don’t like DoTs, so Shadow Word: Pain just annoys me) and the healing/defense spells seem off too. I’m not at all clear on why they bothered with Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal when ranks accomplish the same thing, for instance. And the Weakened Soul debuff annoyed the hell out of me when I was trying to heal in RFC. :mad:
Obviously I know this is just perception, since Priests are clearly very successful, Kene being one. So far it just isn’t my thing, though.
She’s got friends on Blackwater, and started playing before I made a character over there. Besides, she prefers Alliance. Yick.
/kneel
Tell them to initiate a vote kick on you or STFU and do not move until they tell you their decision…YOU are in the driver’s seat, use it to your advantage. They’re teenagers…they still have a lot to learn…if that means they have to wait another 10-15 minutes for another tank, while you jump into another instance. YCooldownsMV.
My priest just hit level 33, I’ve been leveling as Shadow although I’ve seen some people claim that Holy is the best until you hit level 50, from what I can understand because Shadow need Shadow form and Vampiric Embrace to be really good(having played a Warlock I think I know what will happen once I get Vampiric Embrace :)). Not that I’m experiencing any real problems other than some demons with very high shadow resistance, but as it turns out even untalented, Holy Fire+Smite spam was pretty effective(granted, I got lots of heirlooms). Single mobs die with little effort but more than one is, harder than it is on a warrior, but then again very few classes are really good against multiple mobs at low levels.
Regarding Lesser Heal, Heal and Greater Heal I suspect that this a case of Blizzard designing the Priest class first and then realized that it was stupid to do it like that when they started on Shamans, Paladins and Druids but they never bothered to change it on the Priest, just forget that the lower versions exist once you get the high level ones and you’ll be fine.
Personally I don’t see the problem with Weakened Soul, without either that or a 15 second cooldown PW:Shield would be horribly overpowered, at least with Weakened Soul you can use it on several targets at once.
Don’t remember exactly what level it was, but for my Disc priest things got a lot more fun somehow when I got the damage reflection talent for my power word: shield.
Festergut is less about the tanks and more about the tightness of the cooldown sequence that can be chained to carry them through Festergut’s burn phases. It’s something the entire raid should be coordinating, not just the tanks or healers, but even, say, DPS paladins. I’d personally prefer a non-Blood DK for this fight, since damage reduction is more valuable than HP sink when dealing with high over-time income instead of single spikes, but the real key to tank survival is more in raid cooldown coordination. DKs are valuable for having two of their own heavy cooldowns rather than just one, but even then you’ll still need outside help.