I Got The Blues

Ghostcrawler had some interesting things to say recently.

First, for the tanks:
We think defense was a little too easy to get in BC. Most tanks (warriors anyway) walked in Karazhan almost uncrittable in just heroic and quest reward gear. Those +defense gems might have well not existed. It just felt like defense ought to take a little bit of effort to max out (using the crit barrier as the limit -- I realize it continues paying dividends beyond that point).

Wer'e not sure yet how far we want to push it in the opposite direction though. It could be that the current numbers are too punitive and tanks will explode to Mr. Anub'arak.

I'm not sure where this idea came from: thinking it's bad that your tanks are uncrittable walking into an entry level raid "in just heroic and quest reward gear". Having geared up a Prot Paladin and Prot Warrior, I gotta say it's not exactly "easy" to get uncrittable. You could only have 1-2 pieces without defense rating, and you pretty much had to have a +defense trinket. I'm not to that point yet, but I can definitely see how uncritability would be hard to reach without the defense rating of a weapon and shield. There still seems to be a (theoretical) mitigation gap between tanking classes, but hopefully since raids are currently being tested they'll begin to iron out things like that.

Second, for Unholy DKs such as myself:
I think the ghoul is just doing too much damage.

I have to agree. Ghoul functionality is really unusual right now. You can't really consider the ghoul a "burst" ability, as it's alive for 2 minutes. However, you can't really consider it a classic pet, or Death Knights a "pet class", because only Unholy can get a permanent ghoul and yet lack basic pet functionality such as a reliable pet heal.

Some questions Blizzard needs to answer:
1) Are ghouls budgeted as part of a Death Knight's long term raid DPS? For all specs?
2) Are ghouls supposed to be a major part of an Unholy Death Knight's DPS? If so, won't having reduced personal DPS gimp Unholy threat generation for tanking?
3) Should ghouls receive basic pet functionality such as a pet heal or the "Avoidance" skill, or are they going to suffer the same problems as Shadowfiends (easily killable)? If they remain lacking in basic pet utilities, is it even fair that Unholy is reliant on them?

A few possible fixes for all this I would suggest are:
1) Death Knights become a full fledged pet class for all specs. Ghouls are permanent and keep the same skill set, but also learn the Avoidance passive skill. Death Coil healing is buffed to roughly double its current amount to provide more reliable Ghoul healing, OR a new skill is introduced for healing Ghouls that costs a rune. This is probably the worst of the options, as you would have to lower DK personal DPS and hence threat, which is bad for tanking.
2) Master of Ghouls is removed, and Ghoul duration is nerfed to 30 seconds or so. This way Ghouls are an actual burst damage cooldown. All ghouls would have a pet bar regardless of spec.
3) Ghouls are removed completely. Call it a loss and balance the three specs without them. I'm leaning towards this option.

Well this problem is certainly.... ghoulish... eh eh eh... okay... never mind, that was terrible.

Peace out.
- Andtaxes