Warrior Threat Needs Some TLC

Riot · 12/08/06, 12:04 PM

Warrior Threat Values Need To Scale:

In poking around the forums this morning, I found this thread devoted to Warrior threat values: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....92309409&sid=1

I have to say, after looking at these values I'm severely disappointed in the threat values assigned to Warrior abilities, if these numbers are true. For those of us in beta who've been devoted instance tanks, it's becoming increasingly obvious that static threat values are making Warrior tanking beyond enjoyable, but more a rather large pain in the backside.

I think it would be a fair estimate to say that DPS classes have experienced a large gain in their abilities. Simply put, they put out much improved damage, by and large. But for whatever reason, Warrior threat abilities have not increased by even a similar amount.

Most pulls in TBC consist of 3-5 pulls, so even with various means of crowd control, it has been largely designed to challenge groups. I think most Warriors, including myself, enjoy the challenge of such pulls. But as we get further geared, we get more and more starved for rage generation unless we deliberately undergear ourselves. So tanking becomes more and more difficult, and in the future as gear improves, what are we going to do? Our threat isn't increasing, but DPS is increasing. I used to kid around with the other tanks about how crappy their rage generation is. Now that I'm the one in that hotseat, it's not so funny.

Will we need to ask people to hold back hardcore? Is it intended for Warriors to be pure raid tank machines?

Thoughts, discussion, criticism all welcome.

(Toir, 70 Warrior, Hellfire)

Bury · 12/08/06, 2:54 PM

Originally Posted by Riot

Most pulls in TBC consist of 3-5 pulls, so even with various means of crowd control, it has been largely designed to challenge groups. I think most Warriors, including myself, enjoy the challenge of such pulls.

In my experience, this makes things hard for warriors, but is actually pretty easy for tanking paladins/druids. Unless your group's warrior is meticulous about tanking all adds (it's amazing how many tanks don't care enough to build threat on secondary targets in BC beta*), the warrior is going to be an inferior single target tank. Paladins and druids do take more damage, but this isn't even a big deal in the 70 instances.

Until you hit heroic mode. Solo healing a paladin that is tanking 5 mobs at once on heroic mode is not feasible atm. (link to paladin) So while the other classes are definitely catching up to you in terms of multi-target threat generation, I still see warriors as kings of single-target threat generation and damage mitigation in general.

*to be fair, you're one of the best warrior tanks I've played with

Riot · 12/08/06, 3:12 PM

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm in no way trying to detract from Paladins and Druids, but I find it somewhat ridiculous that 1 Consecration can outaggro 2 sunders. It's somewhat ridiculous that I'm tabbing from target to target and throwing up Sunders, while a Paladin can just sit there and press Consecration. But that's their style, and we have ours.

After that experience, I have really stopped using Sunder Armor in beta at the moment in 5 man instances where rage is incredibly precious.

There is obviously some time to go before this becomes a crisis of any sorts (if you can deem it one yet!) per se, but it's better to address issues as early as possible, I feel.

One quick note about Heroic Difficulty - it's somewhat interesting to have mobs hit you for a thousand a hit or greater - take the dogs in Ramparts for instance - they destroy people so quickly, utterly.