A: Death knights are a somewhat different style of tank compared to the others. They take significantly more damage than other tanks, but then heal/shield that extra damage back instead (and sometimes more). Due to taking more damage, and that damage coming in spikes, they’re also the most likely to die to unexpected burst (such as when they don’t have runes up to Death Strike, have no cooldowns available, and fail to dodge or parry a few attacks in a row. They also have more personal impact on their own survivability and mitigation than any other tank, by tying much of their performance to Death Strike (and especially optimally timing their Death Strikes). So in the hands of a really skilled player, they can do some amazing things, but not usually much better than the other tanks. We’d actually like to head more in that direction with the other tanks (making them tie more of their defensive performance to their ability usage), in the future.
Taken verbatim from "Ask the Devs" Tanking.
So read the underline portions in sequence... Death Knights take more spike damage, are held more responsible for dealing with that spike damage, and assuming they DO deal with it, are not usually much better than any other tank?
Maintaining of course, that other tanks have less of a responsibility for mitigating damage, and evidently, take significantly less damage (inference based on this Dev affirmation of the DK's "somewhat differant style").
So essentially, they take spikier damage, are affirmed to have to play harder, are at a higher risk of dying, and don't really do better than any other tank?
Where in this does the DK "Style" seem balanced?
Additionally, there is the tidbit about optimally timing Death Strikes. Was shield stacking not introduced as a "fix" to this?
Ultimately, my question is; when maintaining the affirmations made by the Devs regarding the Death Knight tank style, where are Death Knights compensated for the extra skill and risk associated with their class' tank spec?