Why we needed the nerfs.

Lately, all the big buzz on various boards are about the vast amounts of nerfs being thrown around. Nerfs to Jewelcrafting, nerfs to various PvP issues, and probably the most talked about amongst class forums; the nerfs to Death Knights.

Today, I'm going to talk about my off-spec - the Tank. There's a lot of pissing and moaning going on about how badly Death Knight tanks are being treated in the upcoming patch, but I have news for those people - We. Needed. It.

When I first started tanking, I had some serious threat issues. In fact, that was a Death Knight's largest failing; the threat we put out wasn't nearly as strong as what a paladin or bear could dish out. My problem was that I couldn't even keep threat off some of our DPS. Whenever given a choice, I'd always take the secondary or tertiary mobs to tank so I could get a 'running head-start' on threat before the DPS started in.

Slight tangent, I think I have that problem nipped in the bud, now that my hit rating is very nearly max'd. I still have to find some more so I can swap out my aging TSD, but right now I'm in a good spot.

Back on track. I've always used my threat as an excuse as to why Death Knights were balanced against the other classes. However, that's no longer true. I may not be able to pull a mob off a paladin tank, but I don't seem to have issues keeping a boss glued on to me, even while our DPS are going full bore trying to beat a timer. So that's a moot point now.

So, with that little bit of anecdotal evidence squared away, let's compare my off set to a pair of raid geared tanks; one warrior, one paladin.


Unbuffed, I have:
34.6K Hit Points
26139 armour
24.87 dodge
17.30 parry
544 defense


The Warrior:
31.0K Hit Points
24413 armor
23.9 dodge
19.0 parry
29.0 block
*I assume 540 defense*

The Paladin:
33.7K Hit Points
24389 armour
25.03 dodge
18.61 parry
25.18 block
540 defense


So... right off the bat, I have more Hit Points and more armor than both of them, which are the #2 stats to work on when stacking Effective Health, which is best to do for hard hitting raid bosses. Parry and Dodge values are fairly even, though both of them are ahead by a few percentage points. And they have block, of course, but that's debateable on how good that is right now.

Now, the reason why those numbers are significant.

Those two people are raid geared tanks. The paladin has one piece of 213 gear, two pieces of 219 gear, the rest are all 226 items.

The warrior is a bit lower, having one trinket of the 200 iLevel, two pieces of 213 gear, two pieces of 219 gear, and the rest 226 (with the exception of a 232 weapon!).

Where as I, being my off-set, have four iLevel 200 items (two of them blue quality!), three pieces of 213 gear, four pieces of 219 gear (one with shield block stats, which are useless to me!), and the rest 226 pieces.

You ask me - "Anti, that's a lot of numbers and I'm not reading that. Get to the point." Okay, I will. My point can be summed up as thus:

My gear is inferior to our raid tanks, yet my stats are close, and in some cases, much higher, than theirs. That is a problem, and why we need the nerfs.

Now, whether we need to be hammered as hard as we are getting... that's another debate, for another day.