While I think it's true no class should be 100/100 in 2 of the 3 essential MMO functions (tank/heal/dps), a warrior cannot be 100/100 currently. If he specs prot and has good tank gear and DPS gear he can be 40/100, if he specs DPS and has good damage gear and tank gear he can be 100/80.
Compare that to a mage, supposedly the "master of ranged dps." The convention will be x/x/x, in the order of tanking, healing, dps.
If a mage specs 17/31/3, he can score 1/1/100.
If a mage decides "lol I will main tank" and specs into pr0 tanking talents like Arcane Resilience, Magic Absorption, Magic Attunement, Ice Barrier and Imp. Frost Ward, he can be like 2/1/70.
The same goes for warlocks, hunters and rogues. They are all competitive for damage (or should be) but have no ability to do anything else on the tripod, not even at the cost of a 50g respec.
While I think it's true no class should be 100/100 in 2 of the 3 essential MMO functions (tank/heal/dps), a warrior cannot be 100/100 currently. If he specs prot and has good tank gear and DPS gear he can be 40/100, if he specs DPS and has good damage gear and tank gear he can be 100/80.
Compare that to a mage, supposedly the "master of ranged dps." The convention will be x/x/x, in the order of tanking, healing, dps.
If a mage specs 17/31/3, he can score 1/1/100.
If a mage decides "lol I will main tank" and specs into pr0 tanking talents like Arcane Resilience, Magic Absorption, Magic Attunement, Ice Barrier and Imp. Frost Ward, he can be like 2/1/70.
The same goes for warlocks, hunters and rogues. They are all competitive for damage (or should be) but have no ability to do anything else on the tripod, not even at the cost of a 50g respec.
One thing I did take exception to was a post about itemization being poor for DPS warriors. Speaking on behalf of my rogue, I would KILL for titanic leggings+lionheart helm+onslaught girdle. Every time I look at a piece of warrior DPS gear I die a little inside.
Ghoul skin tunic is another example, it's obviously feral gear but it's also a trash drop that gives warriors what, 80 AP? The best comparable example for a rogue requires killing 4H, 25 leather scraps, 2 arcanite bars, and 6 cured rugged hides.
Back to onslaught though, as it's the premier funny example. Ilvl 78 drop off Rag with a 12% drop rate. The equivalent item for a rogue wasn't itemized till C'thun, is Ilvl88, and is a lower % drop.
This isn't warriors faults, this is blizzards. One can almost look to any slot of warrior gear, do the STR > AP conversion, call it leather, and it would be the best stuff till T3.
While I'm on this tangent: crafted items are another area that I'd like to see massive improvements to rogue itemization. Leatherworkers have suffered for so long making FR gear for their guild, I would really like to see Blizz implement some *GOOD* crafted leather DPS gear. Maybe take it the route of mixing AGI and AP on the pieces to put it on par w/ T2.5 or something, just via another route.
Utility is nice, but no utility will ever match being able to be more than one leg of the MMO tripod. The only classes that can really claim that are warriors and druids.
And I swear to god, if they design "The Suppression Room - new and improved, now with more traps!" I will quit my rogue. I don't *want* that kind of idiotic utility. Kiting is good utility. Offtanking is good utility. Crowd control is good utility. Interrupts are good utility. Staying out of the way of the majority of the encounter so that I can click on a trap once every 30 seconds is not good utility; it's just stupid. Mekkatorque was better design.
Blizzard doesn't want to use the tripod as a model, though. I don't think they want to make more supression rooms, either, but pure DPS classes are something they're trying to avoid
I don't want to pay taxes, but I don't get much of a choice in the matter. The tripod isn't so much a model to build on as an inevitable result of certain types of rulesets. Nobody designs for the tripod, but it's hard to get away from it.
If you're going to have one big thing to kill, you need to make sure it doesn't kill you, so you need someone for it to do damage to, someone who can take the hits. Tanking. Now that you're tanking damage, you need to make sure the person taking it doesn't die. Healing. Then, of course, you need to kill the big thing. DPS.
Removing one leg of the tripod tends to lead to a flawed design. If the mob can't be tanked, it tends to lead to trivial encounters because a mob that isn't controllable that's capable of doing enough damage to provide a challenge to heal is also going to be capable of more or less one-shotting squishier raid members. So we can't remove tanking from the list. It's possible to take healing out of the tripod by reducing mob damage output, but that also tends to trivialize an encounter via consumable usage (and if you put cooldowns on consumables, you tend to lose the challenge because you then have very strict limits on damage output and/or cooldowns on the consumables - see Loatheb). And obviously you can't heal the mob to death, so DPS will always need to be there.
Other aspects to a fight may well be necessary - Gluth would be impossible without add control, typically kiting, CC is incredibly important on Gothik, etc. But if every fight includes all of these aspects, fights would be very monotonous. CC, interrupts, stuns, kiting, AoE, rotations and gimmicks are what you use to differentiate between fights.
Tanking, healing, and DPS are pretty much givens. If you have a chair with 4 or 5 legs, and cut one leg out, usually it'll still stand up. A three legged stool missing one leg falls over.
That's why the tripod is so pervasive, and that's why a class that can fill two roles within it is far more powerful than a class that fills one role and has other utility.
Only one warrior can be the main tank, though. That's what makes warriors different. For most of the warriors in a raid, their role is DPS + utility - that "utility" being offtanking and to a lesser extent debuffing
You don't see prot warriors doing any kind of significant DPS in raids, and you don't see DPS warriors doing much tanking in raids except for offtanking (which will presumable be done at least as well by paladins or druids in BC).
with the appropriate gear, i'm 100% positive a fury warrior with zero points in protection can MT every encounter in the game. the only encounter we have NOT had a fury warrior MT on at some point is sapphiron.
I do agree that Blizzard seems to be moving down the line a bit as far as "linear" jobs of one class, but like you said, warriors are still the bastards of this system.
Their take on giving classes an extra job or extra versatility is thusly:
Putting dps talents in holy
Putting raid sustaining talents in shadow
Putting pvp talents in marksman
Putting heal talents in feral(I think, did I read a talent wrong?)
In a way, you are kinda nailing down the warrior class into two separate areas, neither of which are truly "versatile". As others have said, a dps warrior in tank gear is still not a good tank, and a tank warrior in dps gear won't be that geared for it.
Sooo instead, why not change the way warriors work? Make them a primary tank class with some dps abilities, lower their "dps" advantages, and make it so you can be more versatile without tipping the scales on both areas, and holding a monopoly.
Warriors are at a disadvantage simply because they are one of those classes that can completely change their role by specing differently. It's alot easier to use this concept with hunters/rogues/mages etc because their job does not fluctuate quite so obviously by a different gear set-up/spec select.
To put it in better terms, if you had priests that could collect say, a pure healing set-up, and another dps set-up, and then interchangably spec differently and hold the highest marks in healing and then dps, well, why are other classes there? Just take out a few locks and put some priests in there, because of all of their benefits. A priest can swap out of shadowform and be able to heal and then do top dps. This is how warriors are now. Be top dps and then swap and offtank.
I think you agree with the point largely being made, but more utility shouldn't necessarily mean no dps nerfs. Most likely it'll all be balanced out and then you'll get some new stuff to bridge the gap, a move I wholeheartedly support.
Only one warrior can be the main tank, though. That's what makes warriors different. For most of the warriors in a raid, their role is DPS + utility - that "utility" being offtanking and to a lesser extent debuffing
What percentage of your time in Naxx do you spend with only one person tanking?
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
While I think it's true no class should be 100/100 in 2 of the 3 essential MMO functions (tank/heal/dps), a warrior cannot be 100/100 currently. If he specs prot and has good tank gear and DPS gear he can be 40/100, if he specs DPS and has good damage gear and tank gear he can be 100/80.
Compare that to a mage, supposedly the "master of ranged dps." The convention will be x/x/x, in the order of tanking, healing, dps.
If a mage specs 17/31/3, he can score 1/1/100.
If a mage decides "lol I will main tank" and specs into pr0 tanking talents like Arcane Resilience, Magic Absorption, Magic Attunement, Ice Barrier and Imp. Frost Ward, he can be like 2/1/70.
The same goes for warlocks, hunters and rogues. They are all competitive for damage (or should be) but have no ability to do anything else on the tripod, not even at the cost of a 50g respec.
Ok, so druids can be 90/100/70....nerf druids?
I would characterise it as 85/90/70, but that's a separate discussion. We're talking about warriors here. If you want to discuss nerfing druids, make a thread for it.
No, that would be stupid, and is exactly the reason why there aren't currently two tanking/dps hybrid classes in the game, it wouldn't work.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? Or are you really arguing that it's fine to have one class that's the best at 2 of the 3 primary raid roles, but that this special magical rule applies only to warriors and that other classes should just shut up and make do with their 1 role and inability to spec out of it?
Let's have druids outhealing priests and outdamaging warriors then, I don't care. The point is why can't some other class get to have the same fun as warriors do?
That doesn't work either. When a warrior is not called upon to tank, if hes not doing competitive dps, theres no point in him being there. A Dps spec'd warrior is not going to be as good a tank as a protection spec'd warrior, especially come burning crusade. The difference is going to be much more apparent then.
You say there are 3 primary raid roles, lets say theres four. Healing, Main Tanking, Top Notch Dps, and then a huge umbrella of different utility. Under this umbrella are things like off-tanking, decent dps, crowd control, disarming traps :) , tranq shotting, wipe recovery, the list goes on. Yeah a dps warrior can put on his tanking gear and offtank in some situations. You know what so can a druid, my bets are a paladin will be able to as well, hell maybe even a shaman if they want to. The fact is, with the direction things are going, these other classes are going to be able to fill the off-tanking roll just as well as the dps spec'd warrior and if their ability to preform one of the other three roles in a raid drops from top notch to decent, they are now just a utility class. Some might say, you know thats ok, but its not when min maxing a raid. Admittedly, rogues have very little utility, and unless this is improved they should be the uncontested single target dps champs, but it shouldn't be by such an amoun that would encourage raid stacking. Should other classes be able to do slightly more then warriors? Yeah, but it should all still be in the same general ballpark. Their should be incentive to bring a dps spec'd warrior to offtank for one boss fight, rather then have the paladin who was healing the rest of the raid cover for him and bring a rogue or mage instead.
Do warlock and hunters need buffs? Yea, any intelligent person knows that. Do warriors need to be toned down a bit? Yea, and I believe they are doing so, but the people crying for huge nerfs are just wrong.
The order of damage could be Rogue > Mage > Hunter > Warlock > Warrior for all I care, so long as the margin between them isn't so great that it discourages bringing X class on a raid like it does now.
Every class should be able to churn out big damage on a fight when their traditional role is not needed. If warriors tank, healers heal, and dps does dps, then you have to have a lot of people in your guild who only get to see a few fights in Naxx.
Patchwerk requires four tanks or less. The Four Horsemen require eight. If all you have is protection warriors then four of your warriors sit out on Patchwerk. If you have DW/Fury warriors though (which you should) then they can dps. And most fights only requires 1-2 solid tanks. Look at the number of tanks needed for Naxx:
Anub: 1
Faer: 5
Maexxna: 1
Noth: 5
Heigan: 1
Loatheb: 1
Patchwerk: ~4
Grobbulus: 2
Gluth: 2
Thaddius: 2
Rasuvious: 4
Gothik: We use about 5
4HM: 8
So, with 8 needed for 4HM (and all of them being protection) seems like it sure sucks to be a warrior in a guild where the only reason to bring a warrior is to have them tank.
Now, as for DPS spreads, what does a DPS warrior bring to a group other than DPS? BS any warrior can do. So, the only reason to bring a DPS warrior is their DPS. It's the same with rogues, mages, and hunters (excluding tranq). So, the damage meters on a pure DPS fight (as in a fight where everyone's job is either heal, tank, or DPS) should look like this:
DPS warrior/rogue/mage/hunter/warlock (tiebreakers being skill, gear, and spec)
Tanks
Healers
The problem as of now isn't that warriors are too high, it's that hunters and warlocks are too low.
As for rage generation being standardized, it's just to make it so that on a raid sometime in the future, warriors aren't refilling their rage bar after 1-2 hits.
Only one warrior can be the main tank, though. That's what makes warriors different. For most of the warriors in a raid, their role is DPS + utility - that "utility" being offtanking and to a lesser extent debuffing
What percentage of your time in Naxx do you spend with only one person tanking?
a much smaller percentage than I will spend in a 25man dungeon with only one person tanking
Smaller raids = fewer mobs. Paladin and Druid tanking will also likely be more prevalent
I would characterise it as 85/90/70, but that's a separate discussion. We're talking about warriors here. If you want to discuss nerfing druids, make a thread for it.
Even so, it's 85+90+70=245...even if I put 100 in tanking for warriors, I can have 100 for dps and 45 for healing. So please Blizzard give us more healing abilites.
And for those who didn't get it, I'm not asking for druid nerfs, I'm just mocking the whole idea of giving classes "points" to distribute.
It sure sucks to be a rogue when a DPS warrior can do as much damage as you can and can also throw on their tank gear when needed and be useful in another way. Further, you approach the point where you figure out the minimum number of rogues you need for rogue-specific uses (e.g. suppression room) and only take that many of them, filling the remaining slots with more useful classes (DPS warriors) who not only match or exceed their DPS but offer alternate functions.
Warlocks ought to know all about this, because there is honestly no reason to bring more than 2-3 warlocks right now.
Yes, classes filling an alternate role need to be able to do DPS. However, the fact that it's an *alternate* role is the pointer that they shouldn't be as good at it, no matter how they spec, no matter how hard they try or how well geared they are, as a primary class in that role with equal levels of gear and effort.
If you can take a class to fill more than one role, and they happen to fill one of those roles as well as a class that can *only* fill that role, why would you bring the single-role class instead of the multi-role class?
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
Smaller raids = fewer mobs. Paladin and Druid tanking will also likely be more prevalent
You don't know what TBC encounters will be like any more than I do. You could equally well argue that with so many extra tanks around, you'll have fights where you need to offtank 8 separate mobs, none of whom hit very hard.
Only one warrior can be the main tank, though. That's what makes warriors different. For most of the warriors in a raid, their role is DPS + utility - that "utility" being offtanking and to a lesser extent debuffing
What percentage of your time in Naxx do you spend with only one person tanking?
a much smaller percentage than I will spend in a 25man dungeon with only one person tanking
Smaller raids = fewer mobs. Paladin and Druid tanking will also likely be more prevalent
I don't see why smaller raids = fewer mobs. Will you have encounters requiring eight tanks? Probably not. But in a 25 man raid it's *entirely* reasonable to assume there will be 2-4 things to tank/tanks required on a regular basis.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
"That doesn't work either. When a warrior is not called upon to tank, if hes not doing competitive dps, theres no point in him being there. "
So simply because the primier tanking class in the game is not actively tanking he must instantly do similar damage to the very top single target dps class in the game, bypassing hunters/locks/mages in the process to simply warrant their existance?
Somehow I dont believe that. There are plenty of things to offtank throughout Naxx and your role isnt going to be hurt if you went down a few pegs on the totem pole. If you want to dps, thats fine, but you should not do it as well as a class who is souly focused on that as their primary class purpose in the raid.
Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.
~Paradise Lost (bk. IX, l. 171)
What percentage of your time in Naxx do you spend with only one person tanking?
a much smaller percentage than I will spend in a 25man dungeon with only one person tanking
Smaller raids = fewer mobs. Paladin and Druid tanking will also likely be more prevalent
I don't see why smaller raids = fewer mobs. Will you have encounters requiring eight tanks? Probably not. But in a 25 man raid it's *entirely* reasonable to assume there will be 2-4 things to tank/tanks required on a regular basis.
by the same token, you might have encounters where you require 2-4 classes dedicated to keeping mobs stunned or interrupted, or 2-4 classes dedicated to keeping mobs polymorphed/feared. What makes the utility of offtanking intrinsically more valuable than other utility roles?
It's more valuable because it's so much more consistently needed, whether on Trash or Bosses, and because it is a major subset of one leg of the 'Tripod'.
So simply because the primier tanking class in the game is not actively tanking he must instantly do similar damage to the very top single target dps class in the game, bypassing hunters/locks/mages in the process to simply warrant their existance?
Somehow I dont believe that. There are plenty of things to offtank throughout Naxx and your role isnt going to be hurt if you went down a few pegs on the totem pole. If you want to dps, thats fine, but you should not do it as well as a class who is souly focused on that as their primary class purpose in the raid.
Yes, plenty of things to offtank throughout Naxx that can be adequately tanked by a druid or a paladin. Does it really matter if someone is the premier tanking class if its never necessary? I mean the potential is there but its not really taxxed tanking carrion spinners in the spider wing.
If you read my full post I did not say that warriors should do the most single target dps in the game, I said they should be competitive. Being competitive doesn't necessarily mean being first, it means being close enough that it was worth it for you to be there.
It's more valuable because it's so much more consistently needed, whether on Trash or Bosses, and because it is a major subset of one leg of the 'Tripod'.
You can't win without either, and I would argue that the necessity for a warrior specifically to offtank is about as occurent as other forms of utility.
by the same token, you might have encounters where you require 2-4 classes dedicated to keeping mobs stunned or interrupted, or 2-4 classes dedicated to keeping mobs polymorphed/feared. What makes the utility of offtanking intrinsically more valuable than other utility roles?
With a few late-game exceptions, you can almost always brute-force an encounter that is designed to be done other ways through additional tanking and healing. Ossirian can be tanked thorugh Supremacy with use of shield wall. The original strategy of using a Warlock to tank the caster Emperor can be circumvented by just having the warrior eat the AEs. Fankriss bugs can just be tanked instead of killed. Etc etc etc. Tanking is always an option, where most other "utility" abilities are usually hampered in some way. Stunnable mobs aren't always fearable, fearable mobs aren't always stunnable, but when it comes right down to it everything is tankable (at least for a few seconds).
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
It sure sucks to be a rogue when a DPS warrior can do as much damage as you can and can also throw on their tank gear when needed and be useful in another way. Further, you approach the point where you figure out the minimum number of rogues you need for rogue-specific uses (e.g. suppression room) and only take that many of them, filling the remaining slots with more useful classes (DPS warriors) who not only match or exceed their DPS but offer alternate functions.
Warlocks ought to know all about this, because there is honestly no reason to bring more than 2-3 warlocks right now.
Yes, classes filling an alternate role need to be able to do DPS. However, the fact that it's an *alternate* role is the pointer that they shouldn't be as good at it, no matter how they spec, no matter how hard they try or how well geared they are, as a primary class in that role with equal levels of gear and effort.
If you can take a class to fill more than one role, and they happen to fill one of those roles as well as a class that can *only* fill that role, why would you bring the single-role class instead of the multi-role class?
I don't know about your guild but in ours we are hard pressed to find the 3-4 quality geared dps warriors to take a rogues spot. The reality is the rogues outgear most of the "dps warriors" and will always have a slot for that reason alone. We might have 2 dps warriors who can hang with the rogues but guess what.... they are also well geared tanks and this is their primary role in a raid. If blizz nerfs our pve damage they also damage our fun in pvp something most warriors don't like too much at all.
So simply because the primier tanking class in the game is not actively tanking he must instantly do similar damage to the very top single target dps class in the game, bypassing hunters/locks/mages in the process to simply warrant their existance?
Somehow I dont believe that. There are plenty of things to offtank throughout Naxx and your role isnt going to be hurt if you went down a few pegs on the totem pole. If you want to dps, thats fine, but you should not do it as well as a class who is souly focused on that as their primary class purpose in the raid.
Yes, plenty of things to offtank throughout Naxx that can be adequately tanked by a druid or a paladin. Does it really matter if someone is the premier tanking class if its never necessary? I mean the potential is there but its not really taxxed tanking carrion spinners in the spider wing.
If you read my full post I did not say that warriors should do the most single target dps in the game, I said they should be competitive. Being competitive doesn't necessarily mean being first, it means being close enough that it was worth it for you to be there.
Does a paladin or druid tank as well as a warrior can dps? Doubtful as a warrior can dps on par with the best dps classes in the game.
I know as a leather wearing rogue if I had to dps a mob a paladin was tanking I probably as well kill my character and throw some popcorn in the microwave. Raid healing the mt will probably be enough aggro to pull the mob off a paladin.
The point is
A) there is plenty of things to tank
B) you can do two jobs as best as anyone else can hope to, when they only do 1
C) you not taking is not an excuse to do top end dps. You are still needed as offtanks throughout the instance, you going from 1st to 6th on the DM meter isnt going to ruin the need for the raid to have you.
D) debating otherwise simply seems greedy. If a druid could get the pure mitigation a warrior can (+defense, etc otherise), threat generation and simillar acces to itemization, priests would be in an uproar about it as well. The fact is they tank but dont do it will. Shamans can ranged dps, they dont do it well. Many classes can do other jobs outside their spectrum, but they are not vying for top ranks in it. A moonkin isnt going to out damage a fire mage.
Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.
~Paradise Lost (bk. IX, l. 171)
If you can take a class to fill more than one role, and they happen to fill one of those roles as well as a class that can *only* fill that role, why would you bring the single-role class instead of the multi-role class?
Because the multi-role class functions as a single-role class during the fight where they're being compared to a single-roll class. If the only reason to bring either person is their DPS, then they are equal. On Patchwerk you wouldn't take a fury warrior over a rogue because that fury warrior can tank. If that's the reasoning for taking a fury warrior over a rogue, then you might as well take the rogue because he has evasion. The rogue will probly tank longer and better then the dps warrior.
Fight A require DPS fight B requires tanking. You take X people who do the most damage on fight A and then you take those same X people to your next fight, but some of them (assuming some of your warriors are in your "do the most damage" category) won't be dpsing on fight B. The need for DPS has not gone away, just a new need for tanking has emerged. Now, if for some reason you can only bring 25 people with no substitutions for all eternity then rogues are in trouble.
I would characterise it as 85/90/70, but that's a separate discussion. We're talking about warriors here. If you want to discuss nerfing druids, make a thread for it.
Even so, it's 85+90+70=245...even if I put 100 in tanking for warriors, I can have 100 for dps and 45 for healing. So please Blizzard give us more healing abilites.
And for those who didn't get it, I'm not asking for druid nerfs, I'm just mocking the whole idea of giving classes "points" to distribute.
A druid can't get all those 'points' in one fight. A warrior in plate DPS gear with around 5000 armor (just a number) suddenly finds himself tanking, tosses on a shield and suddenly he's got 8000 armor and is tanking effectively. Taking more damage than a tank-geared warrior, but there you have it. Mob's off him and he's back to DPS. Druid in feral (because feral is top druid dps) DPS gear has crap for healing stats and decent armor (though while DPSing he's only got a few thousand). A Druid in feral tanking gear has crap for healing stats and decent DPS. A Druid in healing gear has crap for dps and armor. Beyond which, he has to shift into the appropriate form in most cases.
Just pointing out that a druid can't do it all at once. In a given fight it'd be closer to 80/60/20. And further, most fights require healing classes to heal, which excludes them (druids included) from effectiveness at any other role. As stated, Warriors that aren't main-tanking are either doing some offtanking (which doesn't preclude the ability to DPS when not tanking) or DPS (which doesn't preclude the ability to offtank).
The closest comparisons you can make regarding being able to perform two roles in the same gear would be caster Shaman/Druids and Priests which don't really compare.
JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?
10/05/06, 11:57 AM
Similar Threads
