◊ Kalman

Yeah, which is why I'd have to assume it would either get a CD or not be put in, in its current form its a bit too strong.

 

Celandro

What you really want as a rogue tank is +90 def, 50.6% dodge buffed, then hps. This will prevent all crits and will put you at 100% dodge with evasion up.

 

◊ tenshi

There is a question this raises for me. What type of encounter do you expect in TBC that would need rogue tanking beyond what's currently being done occasionally?

In the 25 man raid, we have warriors, and paladins to tank, and possibly even feral druids. So how many mobs do we need to tank at once?

It seems to me like rogue dodge/evasion tanking already is part of the game. I'm not sure why we need to extend that further when there are other classes that blizzard has already put effort into so that we can tank.

Also given that what rogues do best is single target damage, I don't see the win of this particular trade off to the raid, esp. when there are 3 other classes that could tank if necessary, w/o any changes to the game beyond what is already planned.

Sic transit gloria azerothi

 

◊ Praetorian

This is the strangest theorycraft thread I have ever seen in my life. Are people really devoting this many words to this subject?

Rogues are getting survivability talents to make them less fragile in PvP, against casters especially, and a bit sturdier in raid settings. That's not an invitation to put yourself in harm's way.

Barring gimmicks like Razuvious or Patchwerk-at-3%-oh-god-burn-him, consistent mitigation is superior to avoidance. It doesn't matter if you have an 80% chance of taking 0 damage from something -- if you have a 20% chance of dying instantly, you can't tank it.

 

Celandro

Giving hemo spec rogues a raid role is a valid goal. If they can add +5% melee damage when rend is on a mob so pvp spec warriors have a raid role, I dont see why they cant add the very few things required to give hemo rogues a raid role.

Evasion tanks have been a valid class choice in other MMORPGs. Whats the harm in giving rogues a few threat poisons?


I did want to comment on itemization. Assuming that jewelcrafting is not class specific, it should be possible for a rogue to put in the +def and +sta jewels that would allow them to tank

 

Avair

You don't need 50% dodge I don't think. I have 40% dodge (buffed) and 10% parry now. With evasion up, that should be 100% mitigation (unless I'm missing something). Gurg's point about 20% to die instantly is valid, which is why we need defense (more -% to be crit itemization) and lots and lots of stamina.

 

Gort

Well, I find the idea attractive mostly because after hour 300 of staring at a dragon ankle, abomination ass, elemental uh... well, whatever they have, and many other mostly featureless, boring body parts, all the while counting to 3, counting to 5, then counting to 5 again, the idea of something new and useful to do that might interact in some way with one of the 39 (or now 24) other people with me is a bit of a breath of fresh air, even if it is incredibly silly. (And it is.)

 

Celandro

Evasion tanking rotations is no more silly than complete heal rotations. I bet if raz didn't have his pets with him people still would have figured out how to kill him.

 

Decker

This is good theorycraft. Wait until the tier 9 hunter talent (wearing a shield) is released. We'll have some crazy avoidance as well.

Hunter tanking has always been best for ping-ponging mobs who like to clear hate, or maybe even AOE hate clears! RAWR! :P We can work up our hate while out of range of cleaves, whirlwinds, etc :)

http://www.paradosi.net

 

probiscus

You're just saying that b/c you want more DPS talents 8(

 

Celandro

I actually want a raid wide buff in the deep warrior fury tree. Maybe a talent that required booming voice + imp battle shout and made your battle shout and the new hp buff raid wide instead of group wide. Then you'd really want 1 warrior of each spec on your raids and other classes would have more opportunity to tank (not that fury or arms tanks are bad with the right gear).

So sure, give the hunters a way to tank, the paladins, the rogues, hell even the shadow priests and warlocks. I'm perfectly ok with sharing offtanking duty and even occasional gimick MT duty with other classes.

Don't get me wrong, I love to tank but being able to switch stance, spec and gear to perform other roles well is one of the main reasons warriors are so popular. I want other classes to have at least some of the same flexibility.

 

◊ Kalman

That was an example of existing itemization, though. I'm pretty sure the 90 def mark isn't really doable for a rogue in existing gear, and again, that profile was specifically for maxing out dodge when I first did it. I've redone it now, though, and came up with the following stats:

78 defense (yes, it uses Styleen's, yes that is very silly - you can max out at 84 defense, but it probably isn't worth the hit you'll take to raw mitigation)
4883 unbuffed health
42.75% dodge
15.12% parry
~32% mitigation of physical damage from armor

Buffed, the dodge value would go to +8.94% dodge for horde and +5.98% dodge for alliance (I screwed something up when I calculated this originally, I think...) - in the xpac, with both GoA and BoK available, that's a 12.7% boost to dodge from buffs.

So, here we're talking about (we'll use horde) 51.1% dodge, 14.6% parry, and 8.4% miss rate buffed, for a total full mitigation (base) of 74.1% with a crit rate of 0.48% against.

Downside, of course, is that of the 25% of strikes that get through, 60% of them will be crushing blows because of the single table system. However, if you can live through a single crush, Evasion will save you (or if you can boost your mitigation 10% higher, you could conceivably hit the point where Ghostly Strike is enough to complete the table to 100% mitigation and could thus be used reactively to prevent death while your healers get you back up - that mitigation boost is difficult, though).

tenshi:

"Given that what warriors do best is tank, I don't see the win to the raid of giving them an option to DPS".
"Given that what druids do best is heal, I don't see the win to the raid of giving them an option to tank".
"Given that what priests do best is heal, I don't see the win to the raid of giving them an option to DPS".

etc.

The win is that Blizzard can make more complex encounters without *requiring* stacking of raids. 6 little mobs and one big mob to tank in a 25 man raid? Throw your prot warrior on the big one, the 2 hybrid/DPS warriors, your dodgetank rogue, 2 of your 3 druids with some feral gear and skills, and 1 of your 3 paladins on the little ones. Or use another druid or paladin instead of the rogue, but you have *choices* in this regard.

 

◊ Kalman

That would be the point I have, much more verbosely, tried to get at.

Options are good.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Unless they give druids a talent or skill that allows them to parry I wouldn't expect to see much +defense leather. If they do give druids parry then it becomes a good mod that both classes could take advantage of and hence would itemize for.

I really don't see them taking rogue tanking seriously so this discussion is a bit bizarre.

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Celandro

If blizzard wasnt intending to give rogues light tank capabilities, please explain the talents at the bottom of the subtlery tree.


Kalman: you missed your cloak and shoulders enchants.

 

◊ Kalman

Druids have less of a need for +defense, though, since crits aren't as big a killer when you have 75% reduction and 15k HP. It could simply work out that +def/agi/parry leather is mainly for roguetanking, while gear with AC/sta gear tends towards druids, with the classes fighting over agi/dodge gear.

It is a strange discussion, I admit, but it's better than working.

 

Dakous

It was the leather pants (truckers are after my leather pants - World of Roguecraft 2) and poking dragons in the eyes and giants in the feet. We're already in harm's way. But no, I'm just fooling around.

(Long ramble that doesn't contribute anything dissenting, just an on topic ancedote)

Ever play City of Heroes? I haven't played in two major content patches (Issues, they call them, which has some lovely irony given every MMO ever's patch day woes), but take the Scrapper class. They're very much the Rogue of WoW, without innate stealth. And much like the Rogue of WoW, they have had several bruised feelings with the Warrior (aka, Tanker) class along exactly the same dynamic - damage versus mitigation.

I understand it has been subsequently rebalanced, but walk with me a moment here. There was.. a year? or more of the game being released, and in the state I will describe. All classes (er, archetypes) pick two specializations, so for example, you could have a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes Scrapper, and I might have a Fire/Invulnerability Scrapper - in the Scrapper's case, school of attack, school of defense. In theory, each defense school had various protections against all but one kind of damage (your kryptonite, if you like).

Problematically, the weaknesses of two (Invul and Regen) could be minimized with what are an analogue to talents - so you really had valid Rogue tanks in that game. Because, you see, there was dodge, it had a hard cap, and the talents available to everyone could max dodge. Where's this become really problematic?

Super Reflexes was based entirely on dodge. You got 0 mitigation. They also had an evasion like skill, except after the timer was up, you were basically a sitting target (if you haven't played, imagine that all your gear falls off if you don't maintain 1 energy minimum, the effect was similar to forcing you to sit at 0 energy for a few seconds).

Anyway

All that is by long way of saying it's fun to theorycraft, and while I have tanked many of the lesser raid bosses (BWL) as an emergency clutch, I'm with you on this. Pure percentage praying sucks - warriors are already too flaky as is.

Before Naxx, and without Naxx gear, it wasn't unreasonable, though, to have a 20% chance of going critical. If Blizzard really wants hybrid roles for us all, giving rogues some option to actually be healable (priest champion in a 5 man instance?) so while it is a far cry from optimal, it isn't the assured failure it would be today would be nice.

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

Dakous

Any form of group PVP?

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

◊ Kalman

Really? They were on the original profile, guess it lost em when I swapped things around. But indeed it did.

New unbuffed stats (using a Sapphiron shoulder enchant):

5043 health
78 def
~33% damage reduction
43.75% dodge
15.1% parry

I still hate using Styleen's, though. So many wasted mods.

 

Avair

Here, here... It's also better than talking about new 41 point talents that make our DPS worse.

Rogues tanking gear would be +agility/stamina and defense, with parry/dodge sprinkle on. Unless we got a -crushing blow mechanism, we would need high stamina to survive the first one.

I think you also missing +15 agi to your OH as well.

 

spronk

keep in mind a lot of the defense/resist numbers thrown around are based against a level 63 mob, and the bosses in expansion will be 70 and higher.

i agree having a warrior having higher DPS than a rogue is retarded, the solution is not however to make every class able to do everything. or should my hunter be able to heal and my mage be able to tank too?

 

◊ Lord BEEF

You're assuming that both get itemized. If an item affects only one unpopular spec of a certain class they're less likely to make it, hence why currently there's essentially just one piece of epic leather with +parry, and 3 total pieces of epic leather with a pure +damage focus.

It makes more sense for Blizzard to allow multiple classes to use the same sort of item. As it stands currently they can just make any leather item and throw on varying amounts of strength, agility, stamina, hit and crit and it's a good item for rogues and druids to dps with. May as well make it so tanking leather is good for both classes too so they don't have to create a loldruid tank item and a lolrogue tank item.

Jewelcrafting should help out in this regard as well, allowing you to play the part of the item designer a bit.

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

 

◊ Kalman

Ideally, I really believe every class should have multiple roles, though *never* at the expense of another class.

Warriors can tank *and* DPS. But in no way should their DPS role ever supercede a primarily DPS classes DPS role (which is the current concern), just like off-tank talented classes shouldn't exceed warriors tanking capabilities. Ideally everyone gets something they get to be "best" at (warriors are best at tanking overall, but a druid is good in heavily threat-constrained circumstances and in very mobile fights, a paladin may be optimal for AoE tanking, etc, while a mage is the best AoE damage while a rogue can put up more single-target damage for longer, and a druid is excellent in HoTs and in reactive healing with two instants while a priest is good at group healing and sustained healing, with paladins being good at healing forever and healing in situations where they're taking hits, etc, etc.) and everyone gets to do something else on occasion too.

Would it be horrible for hunters to be able to tank and mages to be able to provide some type of healing role (although, in fitting with the class it should probably be more proactive shield-type healing rather than reactive health replenishment)? Would it be a bad thing for classes to be able to do more things so that players can enjoy more aspects of the game? I know I'm susceptible to min-maxing, but that's because that's what the game allows for - a game allowing for people to fill more roles effectively isn't something I would think people would be *against*.

People who play hybrid classes, in particular, should feel ridiculous arguing against people having some options.

 

Ragnor

You have 25 man raids max and you have warriors/druids/paladins, rogue tanks... I don't think so.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

◊ Kalman

Jewelcrafting might eliminate the issue entirely, depending on how strong it is - if rogue/druid tank leather is mainly agi/sta/dodge/AC gear, each can itemize to their weakness via the sockets (rogues can toss in more defense, druids I'd think would benefit more from +dodge). Druids probably shouldn't get +parry; yes, it makes +defense a stronger stat for rogues, but stamina and AC are both stronger stats for druids via multiplicative form mechanics.