Overall, it's going to be a very tough thing for them to balance, and I suspect we'll see even more gear tweaking and adjustments than we did in BC, unless they've spent a ton of time calculating and balancing things out, or they don't care that guilds that do both 10 and 25 mans could have a substantial advantage.
I would hazard a guess that the whole tier difference we're hearing about is a bit overstated. I fully expect that the 25 man Tier 7 will be better than 10-man T7, but I don't think that T7-25 will be equivalent to T8-10.
In other words if T7-10 is iLevel 200 (making number up) and T8-10 is 220, I'd expect that T7-25 is iLevel 210. So the 25-man raiders will get better loot than the 10 man raiders at the same level of content, but if the 10 man raiders are ahead in content they'll be ahead in gear.
Inadvertently a cold-blooded water-breathing vertebrate with a mood disorder.
In my opinion if T7-25 isn't equal to T8-10, guilds will abuse those 10-mans. That's an unfair advantage in some terms. Forces to run 10-mans (they are tuned for T7-10 content so it should be easy). And that's something what Blizzard shouldn't want.
Oh, by the way, didn't we go over this topic around page 70? ...
I'm most likely picking up PoJ with a sheath build and as a healer I lose 4mp5 in today's terms from vitality? Easy choice to make. I used to put on the old AP rocket boots back when they didn't have caster ones on movement stuff, they save lives.
Another thing to think about though is if blacksmiths get a meta slot they can choose what they want. Jewelcrafters pick the gems they want. Inscribers pick whatever they want for extra glyph. Enchanters have a choice of enchants for rings. Looks like going to be the same for tailoring, as a paladin healer I have nothing to put on a cloak and basically the insightful meta there is far more than I could ask for. Engineering has always been a little left field there; sure boots would work out very well for me, but for example rocket launcher instead of the aldor/scryer shoulder enchant? Doesn't work out too well. Something said about haste to gloves? What if I didn't want haste, can I get something else?
My other profession is LW and I understand a lot of people would like just extra stats on leg armors, but me personally I'm a sucker for stuff like tailoring is getting with the cloaks more. It's just more fun when there's visible stuff happening.
I think the rocket launcher goes on your gloves not your shoulder.
Threads have popped up in several class forums that seem to be converging on a few of the same issues. So rather than cross-posting a lot, I thought I would start a new thread.
Tanking design:
1) Our goal in Lich King is for all 4 tanking classes to be viable.
2) We would like for tanking to be a little more fun. I'm going to leave this vague on purpose, but it is definitely a concern.
3) In 5-player instances, most warriors, druids, paladins and death knights should be effective tanks. The healing specs may have a harder time than the dps specs. Arms wariors, Fury warriors, Ret paladins, Ferals and most DKs should do fine.
4) In 5-player heroics, the expectation is that the tank has a heavy investment in tanking talents and appropriate gear. Arms warriors might have trouble tanking a heroic unless they overgear the instance.
5) For raids, we want all 4 tank classes to be viable. If your group has e.g. a Prot paladin and Feral druid as main tanks with appropriate gear and reasonable skill, you should be good to go.
6) This is a shift in philosophy for us. Previously, we sometimes tried to steer Ferals as being better off tanks than main tanks. We also expected specific classes to appear in the raid. Our new assumption is that you might have any of the 4 tanking classes as a tank. We are trying to achieve as much parity as we can among the 4 tanks without making them too similar. If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed.
7) This is a big one: the game isn't finished. We aren't spending too much effort yet to make sure mitigation, threat and tools are similar across the 4 classes at level 80 in blue or purple gear. Likewise, your talent trees and core abilities aren't finished. Tanking (and PvP) need to have a lot of other pieces of the game in place before we can really get the numbers right. It's fine (useful even) to point out when you feel a particular ability, talent, class or build is too good or not good enough. But please don't infer the work in progress as a reflection of our intent. If we end up changing our minds or if things don't work out, it will be posted here.
8) There are a lot of changes in Lich King that change tanking and raiding in general. I won't list them all out here, but keep in mind things like itemization changes, widespread raid buffs, consumables, UI changes, etc. Just keep them in mind. We're not in Tempest Keep anymore.
5) For raids, we want all 4 tank classes to be viable. If your group has e.g. a Prot paladin and Feral druid as main tanks with appropriate gear and reasonable skill, you should be good to go.
This doesn't really come as a big surprise after witnessing how Blizzard started homogenizing all 4 tanking classes. I mean, it is not a bad thing, but I am really worried about the tanking classes losing their uniqueness and niches as well (then again, I also thought like that when they gave Druids Super Dodge in TBC but it turned out to be a good thing after all - but this has mostly to do with how the itemization worked out, not the idea). So let's hope they figure out a way to make all tanks viable but still keep them unique where you can get slight advantages by bringing a tank of every class to the raid, just like it is now.
Not a tank and never intend to be a tank so this isn't a whine, but doesn't that make being a tank somewhat more difficult and rare? It's hard enough to find a prot warrior spot in a high level guild now with warriors being the optimal choice. Having 4 classes compete for 1-2 spots on a raiding roster it's not looking good for anyone who wants to main tank high end raid encounters. I think I preferred the "warrior for MT, druid for offtank, pali for AoE, DK for magic tanking" angle.
This doesn't really come as a big surprise after witnessing how Blizzard started homogenizing all 4 tanking classes. I mean, it is not a bad thing, but I am really worried about the tanking classes losing their uniqueness and niches as well (then again, I also thought like that when they gave Druids Super Dodge in TBC but it turned out to be a good thing after all - but this has mostly to do with how the itemization worked out, not the idea). So let's hope they figure out a way to make all tanks viable but still keep them unique where you can get slight advantages by bringing a tank of every class to the raid, just like it is now.
I for one(and I imagine a lot of Prot Paladins) would be excited for more viability in non-gimmick situations. I'm not a mainspec protadin, but I have a good amount of endgame experience in it, since I am the guy who gets to spec Prot to deal with the gimmick fights and sometimes bosses. Prot Paladins have a particular niche at which they excel, but the problem is that that niche is trash. I'm sure a flattening of the viability curve across all classes would please prot paladins who are frankly less than optimal in many(most?) cases, and flat out not able in others(spell reflect jumps to mind).
Not a tank and never intend to be a tank so this isn't a whine, but doesn't that make being a tank somewhat more difficult and rare? It's hard enough to find a prot warrior spot in a high level guild now with warriors being the optimal choice. Having 4 classes compete for 1-2 spots on a raiding roster it's not looking good for anyone who wants to main tank high end raid encounters. I think I preferred the "warrior for MT, druid for offtank, pali for AoE, DK for magic tanking" angle.
I am really not too worried about Warrior MTs losing their spot in their guilds/raid groups anytime soon unless they only held the job by virtue of the class they play (sup, Illidan). Competition is generally not a bad thing and if you managed to be your guild's MT for so long you usually know how to tank and won't get replaced by the new guy. But on the other hand, it means you can sit out a raid or come play as offspec once in a while without feeling guilty of letting your raid down.
Originally Posted by Rasputin
I for one(and I imagine a lot of Prot Paladins) would be excited for more viability in non-gimmick situations. I'm not a mainspec protadin, but I have a good amount of endgame experience in it, since I am the guy who gets to spec Prot to deal with the gimmick fights and sometimes bosses. Prot Paladins have a particular niche at which they excel, but the problem is that that niche is trash. I'm sure a flattening of the viability curve across all classes would please prot paladins who are frankly less than optimal in many(most?) cases, and flat out not able in others(spell reflect jumps to mind).
Well, having a niche should not mean that you should suck at other aspects of the tanking game either (single target threat/mitigation in this case). Your niche should be a bonus on top of your base line MT capability. For example if tank class 1 does slightly more TPS than tank class 2 who mitigates slighty more damage, then you pick the one according to your needs but you would still be able to complete the raid with either.
And I'm not sure if you include add tanking on bosses as "trash tanking" but I can say that Paladins are pretty much required in SW after doing having done Felmyst (and I hear they are a necessity for Muru as well, but I am not that far yet).
But hey, maybe I am just thinking that way because I played a Feral Druid in classic and TBC until T5 content and I wanted my class to be MT capable and not just a "good offtank". If only they had decided to change the tanking meta game one expansion earlier (not that it matters now, I am way too much in love with my Warrior for me to consider going back). :P
If you avoid pushback from the first two hits there is still a chance pushback will occur. This change is simply a guarantee that you will not get pushback more than twice during any cast or channeled spell.
With this being said, the existing talents (such as fel concentration for Warlocks) that increase the chances a player will resist pushback are in the process of being reworked in light of this change. We'll provide more information on this as development progresses.
It'll be interesting to see what they change current spell pushback talents to. Maybe a smaller chance, but if successful will let you avoid the effect of one of those two hits.
The current implementation on beta is to reduce the pushback by the resist %. I.e. 70% pushback resist would result in 0.15 second pushbacks, and 40% pushback resist would result in 0.3 second pushback.
While this is still subject to change, given how hard they're trying to reduce effect of the RNG, I don't imagine it changing too much.
I am really not too worried about Warrior MTs losing their spot in their guilds/raid groups anytime soon unless they only held the job by virtue of the class they play (sup, Illidan). Competition is generally not a bad thing and if you managed to be your guild's MT for so long you usually know how to tank and won't get replaced by the new guy. But on the other hand, it means you can sit out a raid or come play as offspec once in a while without feeling guilty of letting your raid down.
Well, having a niche should not mean that you should suck at other aspects of the tanking game either (single target threat/mitigation in this case). Your niche should be a bonus on top of your base line MT capability. For example if tank class 1 does slightly more TPS than tank class 2 who mitigates slighty more damage, then you pick the one according to your needs but you would still be able to complete the raid with either.
And I'm not sure if you include add tanking on bosses as "trash tanking" but I can say that Paladins are pretty much required in SW after doing having done Felmyst (and I hear they are a necessity for Muru as well, but I am not that far yet).
But hey, maybe I am just thinking that way because I played a Feral Druid in classic and TBC until T5 content and I wanted my class to be MT capable and not just a "good offtank". If only they had decided to change the tanking meta game one expansion earlier (not that it matters now, I am way too much in love with my Warrior for me to consider going back). :P
The problem appears when you have one tank class' niche being "mitigation" or "threat", because that makes your main and off tanks, respectively. AE tanking is a nice theoretical niche, but all it really leads to is gimmick fights. Felmyst and M'uru wouldn't be amazingly more difficult or different if you had fewer harder hitting/more interesting mobs to be tanked. It really seems to me that they specifically injected some elements that nearly require a protadin for no other reason than that they need a protadin. So while it's all well and good that you need a prot paladin for Sunwell, that doesn't make prot paladins desirable in themselves. It makes me respec out of ret to prot to fulfill this onerous function because it's not worth carrying a fulltime prot paladin for 2 Sunwell fights. If prot paladins were viable in all areas while other tanks were viable AE tanks, you wouldn't have to create gimmicks to create demand for a spec(and Deaden is just as much a gimmick requiring a prot warrior). I far prefer less specialized and more widely viable tanks.
Have Blizzard mentioned anything about boss mechanic changes then?
Just looking at some boss mechanics and abilities that simply prevent a prot paladin from tanking them eg silence, spellreflect and mana burn. Silence and spellreflect can be dealt with usually but it simply does favor non paladins.
Especially mana burn is one of the most annoying mechanics for a prot paladin, in 25mans it pretty much makes you unviable for the encounter and it slows you down alot in 5mans.
(Maybe making some of the paladin spells physical instead of holy from a casting pov would fix that, aka holy shield and seals)
I don't think it's a problem because it's required to have at least 2-3 tanks so they can still have those mana burn bosses. Protadin "can't" tank it but your guild should still have dk/bear/warrior tanks in the roster.
The current implementation on beta is to reduce the pushback by the resist %. I.e. 70% pushback resist would result in 0.15 second pushbacks, and 40% pushback resist would result in 0.3 second pushback.
Wouldn't that make pushback resistance almost completely irrelevant on channeled spells? For example, it doesn't matter if my MF gets pushed back 0.75s or 0.1s - I still lose the third tick.
Wouldn't that make pushback resistance almost completely irrelevant on channeled spells? For example, it doesn't matter if my MF gets pushed back 0.75s or 0.1s - I still lose the third tick.
This could be solved by giving the third tick at the end of the channel with a reduction on the damage proportional to the amount of pushback suffered.
Fact is, I'm pretty sure there will still be gimmick fights. It's just Blizzard's style. And to be honest, having a gimmick fight in the direction of one tank class or another would not _require_ that your guild MT be of that class - it just means you have to have one on your roster, which, as was pointed out further upthread, is likely to be the case. Now I imagine that for a lot of guilds, that's not going to change the situation much, since vanilla WoW and TBC both seem to have entrenched the idea of a warrior MT - for good reason, I'll admit. I don't expect to see an explosion of feral, DK, or prot paladin MTs in Lich King. However, I do hope that the above posted blue statement means that progression will be a bit easier for guilds like mine, whose top-geared tank is a prot paladin.
Ivriniel and rhea: Speaking as a Prot Paladin, I don't think silences and mana burns are huge enough impediments to prevent Tankadins from taking on any content. Seal of Vengeance can tick while we're silenced while Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous are both castable while silenced.
As for mana burns, anything that hits hard enough to drain your blue bar also hits hard enough to take out a big chunk of the red one, which keeps the blue bar coming back.
Of course, time will tell if I'm just being overly optimistic, but my vision of their "anyone can MT" is a little like a Prot Paladin tanking Reliquary of Souls, but changed such that you don't need to overgear it to kill it without the Spell Reflect.
That is, if your raid is normally geared for ROS, you'll kill her with any tank, but introduce a Warrior tank and reflecting the deaden will make her easier. (As opposed to requiring Spell Reflect, then being doable without it once the raid is overgeared)
It's just Blizzard's style. And to be honest, having a gimmick fight in the direction of one tank class or another would not _require_ that your guild MT be of that class - it just means you have to have one on your roster, which, as was pointed out further upthread, is likely to be the case.
The problem with gimmick fights, and one I hope Blizzard steers clear of through whatever means, is that if your guild is min-maxing enough, you can and will either get benched or play another role for all other fights.
The problem with gimmick fights, and one I hope Blizzard steers clear of through whatever means, is that if your guild is min-maxing enough, you can and will either get benched or play another role for all other fights.
Part of me says that the Touched by the Light talent, as well as the general "make tanks do more DPS" changes they've made, are pointing in that direction. I think that Blizzard is going to continue making raid instances that require varying numbers of tanks for different fights, a la Sunwell, but instead of benching your best raiders because you need to sub in more DPS/healers, you can instead have your extra tank(s) slap on a 2-hander or mp5 trinkets/rings/neck and play a different role effectively. As it stands now, paladin tanks are _really_ subpar healers, and prot warriors are _really_ subpar DPS, but I think they're looking to change that so that min/maxers aren't so bothered by having to swap roles between fights.
Ivriniel and rhea: Speaking as a Prot Paladin, I don't think silences and mana burns are huge enough impediments to prevent Tankadins from taking on any content. Seal of Vengeance can tick while we're silenced while Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous are both castable while silenced.
As for mana burns, anything that hits hard enough to drain your blue bar also hits hard enough to take out a big chunk of the red one, which keeps the blue bar coming back.
You haven't tanked trash before Twins and before M'uru as a Prot Paladin yet. Mobs have PBAOE manaburn that brings you to 0 in a few seconds, and you have to hold aggro just on Holy Shield and taunt. And what's even more insulting, after the mobs are dead, a warrior is ready to chain pull next pack while you say "wait guys I need 30 seconds to drink". Sure it doesn't make it impossible, but it makes it annoying and definitely harder than for mana-less tanks.
Paladin tanking will greatly improve in WotLK, moving from gimmick Consecration-bot closer to "real" tank. However, mechanics intended to punish ranged DPS should not affect the tank. Is passive 100% resist to manaburn and silence through deep talents too much to ask?
However, mechanics intended to punish ranged DPS should not affect the tank. Is passive 100% resist to manaburn and silence through deep talents too much to ask?
While I would definitely welcome something like that with open arms (in spite of my "it's not that bad" stance), one would have to be quite careful with such talents: You can go 15 deep into Holy for Illumination and Spiritual Focus and still have 56 points for Prot with a lot of survivability talents waiting for you.
A silence and mana burn-immune healer may be worth losing the rest of Holy.
While I would definitely welcome something like that with open arms (in spite of my "it's not that bad" stance), one would have to be quite careful with such talents: You can go 15 deep into Holy for Illumination and Spiritual Focus and still have 56 points for Prot with a lot of survivability talents waiting for you.
A silence and mana burn-immune healer may be worth losing the rest of Holy.
How about "Mana Burn cannot bring you below <2*stamina> mana." tacked to a talent?
It would only work if you have tank gear (very high sta) and only protects ~3-4k mana at 70.
So you can still be mana burned in healing mode (high mana), it only protects some basic amount of mana useful for tanking.
(Numbers guessed, just to get the idea.)
Something like that? Not sure about Silence though.
Something like that? Not sure about Silence though.
In a world where our threat abilities look like:
1) HotR (not silenceable)
2) Shield of the Righteous (not silenceable)
3) Seal damage (lasts for 2 minutes, doesn't go away every time we judge, so not really silenceable)
4) Holy Shield (hopefully will be made not silenceable)
5) Judgements (silenceable)
6) Consecration (silenceable)
I think we're actually going to be able to put out respectable threat even while silenced.
Paladin tanking will greatly improve in WotLK, moving from gimmick Consecration-bot closer to "real" tank. However, mechanics intended to punish ranged DPS should not affect the tank. Is passive 100% resist to manaburn and silence through deep talents too much to ask?
That is a problem of being a hybrid. If a healing Paladin could pick up these fights, they would completely trivialize fights like Kazrogal and Azgalor. Now I am not against Paladins getting manaburn/silence immunity but it isn't completely necessary either. If you have 2 tanking classes in a raid (which is not much to ask for) then you can kill any boss in Wrath - or so is their plan.
But if you really want to give Prot Paladins full mana burn/silence immunity tie it to something only a Prot Pala does while tanking. What if they would get a passive buff for 5 secs after blocking with Holy Shield that increased their silence and mana burn resistance by 100%? There is no way a healing Paladin can emulate this even if he specs deep Prot.
They could always just tack on a negative. Immunity to mana burns and silence combined with -100% healing while Righteous Fury is active would work for example.
08/12/08, 3:24 PM
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