Paladin - Protection
4 piece: It's crap. Unless you plan to make avoidance actually useful and stop making unavoidable damage spikes.

Change it to be flat damage reduction in line with others, or absorb at worst.

Oh and first.

Warrior Protection

2P Please consider making it 20% damage on Shield Slam and Thunderclap and please make those 20% affect the innate threat on those abilities aswell.

4P Don't listen to the negative people but please have some other spell trigger it.

2-piece bonus:
Why do Warriors get bonus to single-target ability Shield Slam, and other classes to their AoE ability? For Paladins it's a win-win because they use Hammer both on 1 target and aoe, but for DKs it's just a copy of D&D glyph and useless on single target, since D&D costs too many runes to use on 1 target. Also not sure do bears swipe on single target. And if you meant to boost AoE threat, why not Consecration and Thunderclap for Paladins and Warriors.

4-piece bonus - all other classes except Paladins get damage reduction or absorption, which works on all kinds of damage, yet Paladins get inferior dodge, which does not help in all situations, like magic damage or while being feared / stunned. Why is that?

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Q u o t e:
# 2 piece bonus - Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay ability by 20%.

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If I would see Rune Strike instead of this joke here, I would say it's a decent set bonus.

I've nothing to complain about really, set bonuses look good which being the final Wotlk Tier, they should.

However I must say to any paladins disliking your 4set, yes - it's not as good as the other tanking classes, however warriors T9 wasn't as good as yours - also you have advantages already, so is it such a big deal that your 4 set isn't as good? You'll probably still be the better tank.

On the upside, maybe the itemization ends up being bollocks and you'll be best of going for non-tier pieces!

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Q u o t e:
warriors T9 wasn't as good as [Paladins]

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O_O

how can you say that? :)

[DRUID]:[TANK]

2 piece bonus - too weak for tanking, swipe and lacerate are too low damage abilities, compared to Paladin and Warrior bonuses the threat increase will be too low. It should be 15% or 20% on Maul or Mangle

4 piece bonus - Is good, no comments on it.

Death Knight: All 3 speccs

2 piece bonus - A decent boost to AOE threat. However I see this set bonus being only useful if specced Morbidity. Only Unholy tank or non-Death Rune Mastery Blood tanks specc this at end-game content. It's pretty much a useless set bonus for Frost tanks. I only use Death and Decay as frost as a pick-up ability. The 20% extra threat on a pick-up ability that doesn't create that much threat with 3 ticks won't make me that excited to get the (2) bonus. I wish I was able to acces PTR and Live servers to work out wether the set bonus would allow it to be viable for single target threat.

4 piece bonus It's not bad. It's averages out as 2% passive damage reduction. As a DK tank, Blood Tap is very useful to use in conjunction of Unbreakable Armour and Bone Shield which are 'tank cooldowns'.
However as a blood tank I can't really see as much advantage. Pretty much gives them a second mini-cooldown. Blood Tanks don't really gain anything from having a blood rune turned into a death run as they are spamming Heart Strikes. But, if they're not specced for Death Rune Mastery, it makes Death Strike their primary attack. Blood Rune use would help with this.

In short: (2) is not that aw-inspiring.
(4) Quite nice actually.

This time, you may actually make me want to get the (4) bonus.

Speaking from a Druid tank perspective:

2 Piece Bonus: I'm still up in the air on how to evaluate this one, the extra swipe damage could help on trash aoe, especially when you have pesky warlocks being pains in the back side. I feel that you guys have picked out lacerate for the single target increase more than anything. However lacerate as an ability carries little threat in comparison to our other abilities, so increasing the damage of something which packs more punch would be more beneficial for single target tanking. Of course Maul would be the ideal choice although I don't know if you guys would see that as "OP", maybe Mangle (Bear) perhaps? Surely the CD on that ability would stop it from appearing as an "OP" move.

4 Piece Bonus: This is great, 12% extra damage reduction for a set amount of time. Considering we could use this and barkskin together for a much stronger cooldown would be brilliant, or use them every 30 seconds on rotation to generally reduce the amount of incoming damage.

In short:

2 piece: Swipe for aoe tanking is good, something other than lacerate for single target tanking.
4 piece: Seems like a great idea, every tank loves more damage reduction.

EDIT: Removed my previous edit, looked into better tanking situations.

My 2 copper:

2 piece for druids is a bit...meh from a raiding perspective. More swipe damage/threat is ok for trash but so far there hasn't been a lot of big waves of aoe trash since Naxx except Ony whelps. Maybe there will be a need for a lot more aoe tanking in ICC but at the moment it feels lacklustre - better suited to early-tier stuff and heroics than raids. Extra damage on lacerate...it doesn't hurt, but it's nothing to go out of your way to get by any means.

4 piece bonus sounds excellent as it's almost like a second barkskin. As long as all the other tanks are getting something comparable (which seems to be the case), this sounds like a solid bonus.

Having tanked as a DK until getting (over)nerfed, and as a warrior before rerolling DK, I'm willing to say this:

Death Knight
2-set: I'm not sure what to think of it. Extra AE threat is great, ofcourse, but there was a time where D&D was included in the single target TPS rotation because of its threat modifiers. I can't say I mind if it does once again, but is this what Blizzard wants?
Besides that, I'd love for it to include a solid single target TPS increase as well.

4-set: It's definitely nice, especially because it means the crappy and underpowered Death Knight cooldowns can become a somewhat respectable cooldown if combined. The combination of Blood tap and spec cooldowns together can somewhat compensate for the lacking baseline of the class.
Good set bonus, but the class needs more work to become an option as a MT for good guilds.

Warrior
2-set: Thunderclap instead of Shockwave would have made more sense, because that's what is keeping mobs glued to warriors. Shockwave is also trickier to use on AE packs, and having that be responsible for an even bigger portion of AE threat is just poor. Also, with Shockwave getting the damage increase I believe it would be better than devastate on single target TPS, further complicating the warrior TPS rotation. I can't say I'd mind, but I believe Blizzard has stated several times that's not what they want.

4-set: A typical "oh crap" cooldown. Anti Magic Shell does 50% of a Death Knight's hp in magic only, so 20% to all damage types seems a bit low. With 55k hp, or with Last Stand 71.5k hp, you're looking at a 11k or 14.4k absorb. That'll probably be less than a quarter of a boss swing.

2 Piece - a solid threat boost, no complaints here.

4 Piece - Lackluster compared to other four piece set bonuses for previously mentioned reasons. Most abilities that you would want to dodge are unavoidable.

12% damage reduction and the absorb effect are much more versatile set bonuses all around, since you can use them for both general purpose survivability and against unavoidable high damage spikes.

12% dodge is only good for the former, and doesn't do any good against spell damage or ranged attacks either.

The warrior 4 set bonus seems to be a bit weak. absorbing 10k from a single hit isn't really going to save you in many situations. I'd rather have it made a 12% dmg reduction during the bloodrage duration instead.

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Q u o t e:


O_O

how can you say that? :)

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Well it might just be me, but Shield Block's CD is short enough as it is, its not there to be spammed (apart from anub arak's adds I guess) - I usually save it for when I take a chain of hits or during taunt transitions, the -10 seconds off cooldown doesn't aid either of those.

if the 4 set was 30 seconds off shieldwall, I would consider it better - that's how I came to that conclusion! :(

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Q u o t e:
The warrior 4 set bonus seems to be a bit weak. absorbing 10k from a single hit isn't really going to save you in many situations. I'd rather have it made a 12% dmg reduction during the bloodrage duration instead.

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They have the same values. 10K now, or 10K spread out over 10 seconds. Neither is immediatelly better.

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Q u o t e:

Warrior

• 2 piece bonus - Your Shield Slam and Shockwave abilities deal 20% increased damage.



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Me likey ^.^

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Q u o t e:

4 piece bonus - Your Bloodrage ability no longer costs health to use, and now causes you to absorb damage equal to 20% of your maximum health.

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Question about this one... With the wording you've put one can assume it will be like a priest bubble in that it absorbs the damage and then pops and goes away. Now assuming HP continues scaling as it does, it may be possible to see IC tanks with 60k hp, So a 12k Bubble. Now if i take an example of Gormok the impaler on 25man ToC, he hits me with about a 20k melee swing, So what you kinda saying is that ill be getting half the damage removed from a boss attack every 60 seconds? And IIRC, i dont get any rage when i absorb damage meaning that ill also be getting half the rage from that hit.

Rather lack luster dont you think? Also when did warriors use any kind of absorb effect? I want to be physical :(

Did some math, the 2 piece set bonus would give about 6-7% threat increase for single target and about 3% DPS increase. Which looks ok.

As for the 4 piece bonus, I love it. I always hoped enrage not to cause any armor loss via a minor glyph (like the bloodrage glyph for warriors)

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Q u o t e:
you're looking at a 11k or 14.4k absorb. That'll probably be less than a quarter of a boss swing.

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For that to be true the boss would swing for 44K or 57.6K. This kind of damage is not normal swing, it's something you anticipate and use CDs for.

Warrior - Protection

2-Piece: I like the look of this due to the changes made to warrior threat being highly proportional to damage output. I personaly like the two abilities that have been chosen to be affected by the bonus. I beleive that the new focus on block rating and block value for off-tanking Anub has made a larger proportion of Warrior tanks aware of the benefits of a healthly amount of block value and thus would also be greateful for the added bonus to Shield Slam.
I strongly agree with the added damage being with Shockwave as apposed to Thunderclap. Maximising the efficiency of Shockwave still requires a partial amount of skill due to the need to position mobs infront of you so as to move them into your frontal cone. Buffing shockwave would be a very good incentive for players to learn this skill. If however the buff was aimed at thunderclap which has a 360 degree range, the skill required to do good aoe threat as a warrior would decrease, having an ever so slightly detrimental effect.

4-Piece I approve of the mechanic of the bonus being similar to that of last stand as apposed to increased mitigation or avoidance. However, i really dissagree with it being tied to Bloodrage. I think this point has already been made but for me personaly bloodrage has its own "panic button" niche to fill and linking it with a completely different mechanic would be very awkward. I begin almost 100% of fights with bloodrage, why would i want to blow a potential cooldown at that point? I wouldn't. Also, what about people that glyph for improved bloodrage, reducing the damage it does.

A way to get round this is to maybe have a straight 20% buff to last stand, increasing it's strangth but not giving warriors the extra cooldown.

You could also link the bonus to another ability like Spell Reflect. This ability is used more in "panic" situations than bloodrage is and would compliment it greately.