Tanking discussion, Druid/Warrior/Paladin
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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