Augh tank time!

I posted this in the benefactor's bar, but I figured I'd expound on it a bit here in my blog. The gyst of this big, long post is that I'm concerned with the direction tanking is going for this expansion, particularly for my class (but also for the other tanks). .

We started Wrath with 2-3 prot warriors, 1 prot paladin, a feral druid and a couple dps-focused DKs and fury warriors. Our feral druid had returned after a brief hiatus at the end of TBC. I don't think I'd characterize him as a hardcore theorycrafter or researcher type (for starters he didn't have protector of the pack until I asked him why he didn't take it in his BEAR build). He's a nice guy and a solid player, just not too big on doing any research outside of the game. So we've got 4 MT capable guys all vying for the plate drops and shields. It's probably not the best situation, but it could be a lot worse. We'd swap around depending on the encounter so that if I ever couldn't make it some night, we're not training a new MT for every fight that week.

We coasted through damn near every early encounter, gathered up a couple easy achievements. We one-shot most of naxx 25 our first week in the zone (week 2 of the expansion). Our tanking set-up seemed ok, although we continued to get tanking gear for our DKs in case one of the normal tanks can't make it some night. They're fine picking this stuff up as "offspec" loot.

Then we hit sarth +3. Oh mother. Now, I'm not one to be "I R MT, I AM ONLY TANK", but I am usually the primary tank for just about every encounter for my guild. It's been that way in every guild I've been in since I changed from a rogue to a warrior at the start of TBC. This was one encounter where it became very clear, very early that even a mostly BIS-geared warrior was going to struggle. We try having our feral druid do it. We struggle for quite a while and eventually get it after 3 weeks. Part of the delay was the holidays, part of it was the feral's gearing strategy, part of it was player issues. The next week we struggle again, twilight torment changes and our druid is getting one-shot because he's not a stamina junkie like he probably should be. We swap to a DK tank the following raid night. We three-shot the boss with the DK who'd never tanked this encounter before. The following week we 6 shot the boss with a new DK tank (the original one wasn't available), he screws up a cooldown and gets one-shot by the boss a couple times, I failboat around on adds, etc.


The moral of my big long story is that Blizzard is failing if their goal is to let every tank be the MT for every encounter. Comparably geared/skilled Tanks are not interchangeable right now. What we have instead is a situation where you want one tank of each class and swap who's the MT based on the encounter design. If Ulduar is tuned to be anything like Sarth +3 the BIG differences between tanking classes are going to become even more evident. I know Ghostcrawler has said "It's too early to say" but I'd disagree pretty strongly with that. There are very large, very significant differences in the scaling of each class and they're only going to get larger as the gear progresses.

Big Problems:
1) DK cooldowns - either you have a tank that is horrible when a cooldown isn't up 2/3 of the fight or you have a tank that is amazing when the cooldown is operating and "ok" when it isn't. Either way, these cooldowns are too powerful and too short. You cannot properly tune the content and their mitigation around them. In addition, DKs are still way too reliant on armor value and will have issues with the armor cap as they get better gear.

Suggested fixes:
- Change Frost Presence armor multiplier back to 60% (or the equivalent of plate + shield), add 10-12% damage reduction to all physical attacks (like defensive stance, protector of the pack or righteous fury), keep the magic damage reduction at 15% total. This prevents odd scaling effects with armor buffs like inspiration and ancestral fortitude, in addition to giving them solid baseline mitigation.

- Change IBF to a 5 minute cooldown (4 with talents), 50% damage reduction when in frost presence. This costs a DK 15% damage, and a GCD + rune to shift presence in pvp. It doesn't make sense that you have a barkskin cooldown timer with an ability that can mimick shieldwall with enough defense rating. Yes, it's harder to use it as stun prevention in pvp, but it's pretty stupid to balance this game around a very broken pvp system at the moment.

- Bone armor should be changed to a block-like mechanic rather than a % scalar to all damage taken. Unholy has 2 very good anti-magic abilities already and it's real strength should be anti-magic and aoe tanking. What it lacks is a good mitigation ability to deal with multiple adds beating on the tank at the same time. You could make bone armor like holy shield or shield block. "A swirling mass of bones absorbs (XX% of your str) from every physical attack for 10-20 seconds, 1 min cooldown".

2) Bears don't have adequate aoe threat options - ask any bear how easy it is to pick up sarth welps or randomly spawned adds near them. They need a 360 degree threat move on a longer cooldown (say 6-15 seconds).

Suggested fix:
- Feral stomp added somewhere deep in the feral tree. swipe threat reduced a bit to compensate.

3) BoSanc is way too good for most tanks. This is practically a required buff for DKs and warriors to function in content they outgear when they're in a threat race.

Suggested fixes:
- Give DKs runic power when they dodge/parry/miss in frost presence or give them RP for getting hit in frost presence.
- Add rage gain for dodge/block/parry to vigilance
- Add mana gain for dodge/block/parry to holy shield
- Remove BoSanc from the game, replace it with a last stand or spell reflect ability

4) Barkskin - I'm not really sure what exactly this ability is supposed to be. Is it the "oh shit I'm being focus-fired in pvp" ability, is it the "oh crap I'm getting breathed on" ability for a tank, or is it supposed to be the bastard cousin of shieldblock? Depending on the answer to that question, the fixes to it change.

Suggested Fixes:
- Change Barkskin to a flat damage reduction like block or the suggested bone armor change. Make it work as a % of str or str and int. If it works like a priest's shield (but personal only) it could still be viable in pvp (especially vs rogues and hunters).
- Add a shieldwall-like ability to protector of the pack. 5 minute cooldown, 4 when protector of the pack is maxed out.

5) Stamina scalars != base health or block value - DKs, druids, and Paladins all have pretty hefty stamina and health scalars in their tanking trees.

DKs can get 8% more stamina and 10% more health (which stacks with all their buffs and previous talents). Paladins get 14% more stamina. Druids are rolling around with 50k hp raid buffed. This is partially because of their stamina scalars and bear benefits (51% total stamina increase), partially because they don't have to spend 689 "rating" on defense. At best, I've got 6% stamina, higher base health, and an extra bit of health from Commanding shout (the other guys can get that too, but let's say for some reason they can't because they're out of range of the fury warrior or the warlocks need to use their imp to dps). We're in the first tier of content and already I'm a good 6-10K health behind the feral druid and well behind the DK. We're wearing the same gear as the prot paladin and the DK, but we've got significantly less health, the same mitigation (or worse) and the same avoidance. You might say "but your base health is higher". Yes, yes it is. But you've already eclipsed that advantage and then some.

How exactly do you plan to tune future content against these differences? The magical attack that threatens me is significantly less damage than the one that threatens the feral druid. Either it's trivial for the feral druid and DK or it's lethal for the warriors out there.

Suggested Fixes:
- Less magic-damage heavy encounters - in the current content, a magic damage spike is what causes your tank to explode in a bloody pulp. In that situation, block does nothing and spell reflect doesn't protect you (and it probably shouldn't either).
- New mechanic that allows block to shave damage off of incoming spell attacks. This allows us to compensate for health differences. Druids and DKs were given more health to help them compensate for their inability to block. When block doesn't do anything against an attack, health is clearly superior.



At the end of the day, what I'd like to see is that all 4 tanking classes are interchangeable as a tank for every encounter. That means I expect to be able to avoid raid stacking to have a warior or paladin MT Sarth, I don't have to worry about putting a feral druid on sarth adds, etc.