Savos

I've been thinking about this for a bit and with the IRC chat awhile back things don't seem to add up for what Blizzard is thinking with regard to tank usage.

For the most part now guilds running "high end" stuff late SSC/TK and such every main tank is a Protection warrior. I don't really see much problem with this for the most part but it does annoy me that when Blizzard wants to look at reduce/remove crushing blows from bosses to remove the randomness of it, it then becomes pointless to use warriors as anythign but DPS at that point. Druids can still out threat (most) warriors, have more health and armor and can achieve the same uncrittable status championed by the 490 defense. And they have gear that scales to generate more threat as their average ilvl goes up.

Warriors can't compete at all unless they start stacking +block value on "light" hitting mobs to get a per hit average damage comparable with an equivilent druid. This only works now because druids end up taking more overall damage as a high percentage of the number of melee attacks that do damage to them will crush.

This leaves warriors with tanking resist fights as that is about all they can remain kings at because most of the threat generation is from static skills with no scaling factor independant of weapon or attack power. Which means Hydross, A'lar, $shadowresistencounterinBT, and so forth. Druids are easily the ideal for most encounters if the mobs can't crush in my opinion.

Paladins as they are implemented now are well designed, they have explicit trade offs for the tanking abilities in the multiple target realm. They gain all of this ability at the cost of survivability with lower base stats and needing more categories eating into item level points (spell damage, stamina, defense, block value, avoidance,etc).

How to fix these perceived problems:

1. Define how each class should excell at certain functions of tanking, Paladins win AoE, Warriors Single target, Druids reducing damage to easily healable.
2. Define weaknesses for each class, Paladins against big hitters, warriors vs. 10 mobs, druids vs crushing (? which is possibly going away)
3. Have defense provide some scale factor to threat generation rate instead of relying only for +blockvalue as the only way to increase threat rate.
4. Itemize block value in a way that provides meaningful reduction on 10k+ boss hits.
5. Keep tanking styles sperate. The pure stamina warrior is trying very hard to be a druid, yet won't ever catch up but is the most effective style of warrior tanking.

Sorry for the Druid/Warrior/Paladin thread SH as nesscessary just hope to have some discussion on the implications of removed/reduced crushing blows being looked at by Blizzard.

 

Anedris

Warriors have cried "Sky is falling" so many times over their tanking uselessness that I hope you'll forgive me if I decide not to pay much attention until I see something beyond speculation.

The druids, by the way, will tell you that they're clinging to their MT-viability by the tips of their claws and are one no-bear-itemization-in-X-instance away from obsolescence. The paladins will tell you that that little survivability lack makes them the second (or third, whatever) choice every single time. And being the second choice as MT every time makes you... not the MT.

Can you link the quote about crushing blows? My understanding was that they might be "reviewed" or "revisited" - which does not necessarily mean "removed" or "reduced." It could as easily mean "changed."

I'm not even going to go into the varying strengths of the different tanking classes. (Warriors are not defined by their ability to push crushings off. Paladins are actually better at that anyways.) It's a long argument that's been run forwards and backwards and upside down too many times to count.

 

Monsanto

You might take solace in the fact that aside from crushing blows, the other thing druids have been asking about for ~2 years (potions and procs in forms) has also been "under review" for as long as anyone remembers.

Just to be clear, what I'm saying to you is that my interpretation of that IRC developer chat was that it was just some pap to placate druids and paladins. It's a politician's answer. It's a way of placating someone with the appearance of a promise, but in fact you've done no such thing.

Druid: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...hol&n=Monzanto
Warrior: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...n=Thundershaft
Warlock: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...gos&n=Valdamar

 

PandemicXTC

You forgot to mention:
Shield Wall
Last Stand
Spell Reflect
...and probably a bunch of other stuff.

Also, one could argue that Warlocks are the 4rth best tank class.

A simplistic breakdown of what tank does what best wouldn't make for as interesting of a game.

 

Pyria

It should go without saying that removing crushing blows would be such a fundamental change that it would require reworking a lot of the tanking game in addition. You can't just take 2.1, imagine it without crushes, and then jump to conclusions.

I actually think that protadins have the potential to find a nice niche, looking past all the problems with sta and mana and gearing for uncrushability for a moment. As has been mentioned, Consecration aggro is rock solid when properly used, and the mechanics and skills of the class make them quite suited to fast hitting dual wielders and undead/demon mobs. Illidan's a dual wielding demon!

And anyhow, I have to agree with Monsanto. Kalgan said they'd deal with crushing blows at "some point in the future, not immediate". That puts it, what, sometime between the next content patch and the next expansion?

 

Savos

Shield Wall is quite nice no doubt. Last stand gives you Druid HP with Warrior armor for 20 seconds. Reflect is pointless on 99% of raid mobs

I do know that there are perks to being a warrior in some/many situations for tanking, but I also see the coming "revisit" to crushing blows as something of an odd choice because if fully implemented (which is likely not to occur granted) makes druids flat out better in virtually every possible situation for physical damage non-fearing mobs. They already are pretty good at tanking those anyway but are held back by the lack of crush reduction so you use a warrior for anything with semi-stressful healing requirements and then as you start to overgear you can begin to take advantage of the extra threat and health point buffer putting a druid tank in front of the mob allows. At least that seems to be the progression for encounters.

I'm not really worried too much about "sky is falling" so much as Blizzard seems to try and find ways to fix that, if a bit slow (see Warlocks and Hunters pre-TBC compared to now).

I wish I had a chance to see a Protadin in action but most Horde paladins are holy but I've seen them able to run very high threat rates even without speced into protection.

 

Whitemane

Druids are hitpoint sponges, that's it. They get hit more for less, but ultimately take more damage.

Warriors are king of flexibility, besides if you didn't have a warrior maintank you'd have to ask some poor sod to keep sunders up Also warriors tend to have a chunk more avoidance, I don't know the actual stats for it but just going by what I see as a healer and as a druid tank.

 

◊ Turik

I tanked prince two nights ago, and once I got a Demo/TC up from the DPS warrior, it was pretty cake. Just as many "oh shit" moments as when we did it originally, and we were using weak healers. While I had a lot less health than a warrior or druid may have had (13k... shit luck with drops), the fact that I was able to fully avoid being crushed, even in phase 2, made the damage a lot more predictable.


And on a boss like Moroes, where things generally can only get easier, it was king of easy. Losing aggro to our geared out Druid (usually MT), was a bit of a scare, but AW+exc and a few jugdgements, and I had it back. Blocking for ~350, and doing it 5 or 6 times per 10s, is a huge mitigation bonus. Not to mention on fast attacking bosses, mitigation is extremely valuable as you don't have to worry about spike as much, and shield blocks etc mitigate even more.

Oh, and I step foot in Shattered Halls again today. Man, how I miss that instance as prot.

 

◊ Turik

Ultimately, what it comes down to is ease of healing sometimes... And even though Druid healing is less "effecient", most good healers have their effeciency down so well or can just consumable out their ass, that whatever makes the healing easier makes the fight easier, and healing a druid is very easy. Although there is the spike damage from crushes, the overall spike damage is a lot less.

 

◊ Cathela

I agree; it's not really useful to speculate about that change happening in a vacuum, because it most certainly won't.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Branar

While I agree that speculating about what will happen down the road if one day they maybe remove/change crushing blows is sort of a lost cause, I think it's true that the current situation is fundamentally bad.

Warriors are kings of progression content tanking because they have all the oh shit buttons and good itemization. At the same time, however, a tanking-specced warrior is absurdly inflexible - there's nothing that will let you grind PvE at a reasonable rate, and there aren't any builds that are even remotely acceptable for PvP at all.

Druids obviously take a backseat to warriors on progression content. Perhaps it's justified in Blizzard's mind given their flexibility - where tanking warriors can't shine anywhere else, druids certainly can.

Paladins, for all the changes in TBC and 2.1, still seem to have only one real spec - Holy. From reading the paladin thread, it sounds like poor itemization is the major contributor here. They have a niche in terms of AOE tanking, but really that's such a limited role it hardly bears mentioning.


I really hope it changes. This situation is just fundamentally dissatisfying for everyone. I guess it's better than pre-TBC, but that's about all you can say... Warriors get to tank, but are stuck constantly looking over their shoulders - if druids or paladins are ever good enough to be a viable progression content alternative, tanking warriors will be out in the cold because of how inflexible they are. Druids and paladins get stuck offtanking, or not tanking at all.

Of course there are exceptions, and a few people post stories about pallies tanking prince...and maulgar's a mob where druid tanks shine. But overall, I think the state of tank balance is really very poor.

 

Andorien

I'm struck by the dissonance in how you say every main tank is a protection warrior, you like that situation, and then go on to spend the rest of your post worrying about how in the future, you might be the one on the other side of the window, looking in.

 

IcemanNorth

I dont understand the issue here?

As an Prot Warrior and MT for my Guild, I dont see Warriors losing their job. The only issue that i can see down the line is threat productions because warrior abilities dont scale and damage is a minimal part of warrior threat.

Druids will not surpass warriors because they are already reaching their limit in gear. And Feral Druid in my guild is already at 74% reduction via armor. And we havent even gone into SSC yet. Thus, it comes down to other stats. Itemization is just better for warriors.

In terms of tanking a druid is just too specialized, while the the warrior is a jack of all trades. We dabble in Stamina, avoidance, armor and our itemization means we just have more of everything overall compared to druids.

I cant comment on paladins, as a Horde guild, we barely have enough Holy Paladin as is.


On another note, I dont see why Warrior cant have a monopoly on Main Tanking either.

 

◊ Cathela

Because reserving one raid role for one class exclusively makes for a hell of a lot of inconvenience for everyone else. Believe me on this; we lost all our warriors en masse last summer, and it really sucked.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Does anyone see anything useful likely to come out of this thread?

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

Dalamar

TBH, Warriors are kinda lucky that they aren't good at anything else when they spec prot.

If that weren't the case and they were able to put out somewhat decent dps with devastate, I would have easily replaced the majority of our Prots as the first or second tank on virtually every encounter that doesn't have some stupid resist gear requirement.

But as it stands, we have 4 prot specced warrior (i don't even know why as all but one basically hate the spec) so I, and our other feral, for the most part DPS on encounters even when we are clearly a better choice to be MT or OT. Kinda a downer to have to waste extra time on stuff to cater to the massive amount of wasted raid slots on Prots though.

 

NicotineJones

Does anyone actually have numbers on the DPS a prot-specced warrior in full DPS gear can be expected to put out? A WWS parse maybe?

 

• Theras

In all honesty? Not really. This is pretty much rehashing what just about everybody already knows: Protection Warriors are the undisputed kings of progression tanking and not much else, Feral Druids are great right now but plateau too early, and Protection Paladins are that guy who tries to make a Starship Enterprise with his hands when you're playing Rock Paper Scissors (also, trivial content). And, as always, there are some folks that are paranoid about losing their deeply entrenched raid role, no matter how implausible it might be given the current mechanics.

The only real redeeming discussion point I can think of is the promise of crushing blows being changed in some fashion, in the indeterminate near or far future (possibly when they implement player housing and Hero classes?). But even that's just wild speculation.

 

Savos

Blizzard has made some effort to enforce protection warrior tanks as the top dog, going about fixing things when they are off balance.

And this probably won't go anywhere useful BEEF, sorry about this all.

 

kavalier

No, I really don't. When I was in beta I thought this type of discussion was pseudo-constructive. 8 months and 6 raid instances later... I don't think anything more can be said on the issue.

 

IcemanNorth

If you lose, your Main Tank your guild is always going to take a blow. It doesnt matter if he is Warrior, Druid or Paladin. Main tank is usually one of the best geared players in the guild.

Losing a Warrior MT doesnt mean a Resto Druid can suddenly pick up the spot, even if the tanking classes were equal.


Overall, I don't understand why it is bad that Warriors are the best tanks in most situations?

Yes, you rely on one class the most, but MT is demanding job that either way the person behind the character is more important then the actual class. Thus, when you recruit or promote someone to MT, they better be able to cope with the stress.

Druids overall got their wish. They are the best Off tanks in the game right now. It is a job they have solidified. Druids generate a lot more threat then a Prot warrior without the incoming rage via damage.

No they are not MTs, but they have taken away a roll that before was usually done by DPS or Arms/Prot Hybrids. Maybe, it isnt the job they envisioned, but it is a roll they didnt do before.

Paladin Tanks, like I said before, havent seen one, because they are still in short supply in my guild, but overall i think blizzard want them to be 5 man tanks and not raid tanks at all, or atleast that is what they are good at now. I remember reading in the dev chat that they were looking into paladins. (I could be wrong though)


So, please again, tell me why it is absolutely important to take the MT Job away from Warriors? Balance is a myth, you cant have it. One will always be better then the other, thus it has to be the warrior. He is considered the pure class compare to druids and paladins.

 

Sapp

That's the sort of opinion that is really amazingly unhelpful, and the sort of thought a thread like this should be good at poppting.

Fact: Right now, Paladins have serious issues with tanking anything significant past 5mans and Karazhan (and even some of Karazhan).

So you conclude that tanking 5mans and some of Karazhan is all Paladin tanks are meant for...

Which doesn't make sense, since distinctively "pallytank" items and item recipes have dropped in the Black Temple, of all places.

 

Anedris

More classes able to fill the MT role is good because

a) Some druids and pallies want to MT raid content (and for some reason telling them "If you wanted to main tank you should have rolled a warrior" irritates them)
b) Some guilds do not have access to competent warriors (but may have competent druids or pallies)
c) It makes things more interesting

(Blizzard has also said, at various times, that they want druids and paladins to be viable tanking choices. They've also said that they want warriors to be the primary tanking choice. Blizzard communication at its crystal clear finest.)

The problem with the MT role is that there's only one. There is no progression healing class nor any progression DPS class but of course these roles have multiple people doing them and benefit from a whole mess of synergies. For tanking, well, there's just one tank (even when there's multiple tanks in an encounter each one tanks alone - they don't work together to control and mitigate incoming damage, they just each tank their own mob).

True balance may be impossible, but making each class marginally superior at a certain kind of encounter (fast-hitter versus pure physical versus everything else, for example) such that while one class can tank everything at progression level, each class would be preferred for certain encounters does not seem beyond the realm of possibility.

Mostly I agree with Lord Beef though.

 

Jebraltar

If the tanking classes are equal and the resto druid has a decent tanking set, then you can fairly quickly re-progress through the content with a tank who knows the encounters (and your strats) even if he's not familiar with the tanking role and your most exceptionally geared tank. The division of item classes between Warriors and Druids, and the division of desireable stats between Warriors and Paladins, for that matter, makes it at least somewhat possible to gear up multiple tanks to fill the main tank role simultaenously where it would not be possible with only Warriors as your tanking choices.

Besides that, it very simply gives you a larger player pool to work with. There are a lot of Warriors out there, but there are definitely more Warriors and Feral Druids/Protection Paladins than Warriors alone. This limits your recruitment pool.

The first problem is that it is a huge deterrent to even allowing other tanking classes. Sure, they might get the job done - they may even have advantages in some areas - but why have a Protection Paladin in your raid when you can have a Protection Warrior fill the role? I usually play Holy, but I've been Protection due to a greater need for tanks than for healers in our recent Karazhan runs - the AOE pulls have never gone smoother, Moroes lands nary a crush, etc. Is it worth having a Protection Paladin specifically for Moroes and the AOE pulls? Obviously not. Is it worth having the Protection Paladin to help with those pulls if he's pulling his weight as a MT/OT? Yes.

We're in a situation right now where guilds like Death and Taxes bring four Protection spec'd Warriors to their raids. Why don't they replace one or two with Paladins or Feral Druids? They feel that it would be a waste of time (and gear) to do so. If their MT were hit by a truck, one of those Protection Warriors would be able to step up and MT - why should that only be true for Protection Warriors?

There is an abundance of useful Warriors abilities for tanking - fear immunity, disarm, shield wall, last stand, spell interruption, spell reflect, etc - there is no need for them to also have substantial mitigation/HP advantages over other tanks. I dread tanking Heroics in spite of having fairly good gear because I lack Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout. Now, I will freely say that these are situational. There are many fights where the tanks don't pop Shield Wall or Last Stand at all. Still, the only advantages that other classes have over Warrior tanks (apart from perhaps Feral Druid flexibility) are situational. More threat is always helpful, but not always a gamebreaker.


Paladins are reasonably good tanks, provided that there is no need for high mitigation. Against Moroes, Paladin tanks shine - completely uncrushable, they easily block the Gouge, and they put out nice threat numbers, unimportant as that is for that fight. Against Prince, Paladin tanks are comparable to Warriors primarily because Paladins are extremely unlikely to lose their uncrushable status to a Flurry. Against High King Maulgar, Paladin tanks are generally insufficient - it is trivial for a Warrior to exceed the hitpoint and armour pools of a Paladin with comparable gear, Defensive Stance gives more reduction than the talented Paladin equivalent, etc. They shine for AOE tanking, which works well in the post-BC world of five mobs or more in a pull, but they lag seriously behind both of the other tanking classes for mitigaiton, which makes them rather unsuitable for tanking the majority of high-end content.

Several Blizzard statements have described the Warrior as a DPS/tanking hybrid.

This is not about "Paladins/Druids must be better than Warriors in every way" This is about whether or not Paladins and Druids should be able to compete with Warriors as tanks for the majority of encounters. Blizzard has said that they should, but the current state of the game penalizes those who use non-Warrior tanks to such an extent that Warriors are generally considered the choice for MT. You don't think that it's silly to have only one class that can fulfill a role at all? For example, if Rogues dealt easily five times as much damage as every other class and did not generate threat - no one would say "Well, Rogues are a pure class..." The tanking difference is not nearly that large, but it doesn't need to be. The difference between a 10% increase in DPS and a 10% increase in tanking ability/utility (particularly mitigation)...well, it's the difference between flasking your tank and flasking the raid. Which of these is more commonly the dealbreaker?

Edit:
In all likelihood, this will degenerate into the same useless "Well, other people should be able to tank too" "No, Warriors should be the only tanks" flamebait thread that occurs over and over again at the official forums...and that's assuming that you don't think that it already has.

 

yuri

Well the issue blizzard is facing with tanking is all evolving around the idea of the hybrid concept:

Druids are the most hybrid in this game and people feel that druids, even when specced for a certain role, should not reach the original class in it. And that is perfectly viable and rational opinion. The only issue arising then is why druid tanks still are superior to paladin tanks(altough the gap is closing). Paladin tanks are able to offheal a bit, but aren't even close to offering the utility of a dpsing feral druid.

Warrior tanks as predominant main tanks is perfectly fine with me as warriors just are tanks in most mmorpgs and the entire lore concept of them is evolved around that. In terms of raiding they just are so unflexible as prots and thus need to truely excel at the one thing they are good at.