TBC Tanking Movies - Druid Tanking by Athinira - Page 3

Liar · 01/04/07, 5:18 PM

Originally Posted by Athinira

/wave, can we expect any tanking movies from you soon? Still got MM vs. Twin Emps :P

Dunno, I never Frapsed a movie yet, but I won't rule it out that I might start in TBC. :)

Originally Posted by Athinira

Is it true that Druids are tanking in DPS most of the time as I assumed they do?

Tank most of the time. I doubt there is the room for Cat DPS in 25 man raids though, but im sure you could fit a Moonkin in with the mages etc.

Meh, just realized I forgot a word. :O

I was going to ask if Druids are tanking in DPS gear most of the time since that is what I have gathered from Forums and my own experience in 5 to 20 man instances.

◊ Cathela · 01/04/07, 6:12 PM

Originally Posted by Roana

Originally Posted by Deathwing

Roana, why do you think Paladins aren't that much better, with the amount of buttons they need to tank? I honestly don't know, what would an average paladin do to tank?

It's not just buttons, it's the more general concept of cognitive load. Paladin tanking is dominated by long cooldown abilities (well, eight seconds can be an eternity when tanking), so cooldown management and awareness is a big part of paladin tanking:

(1) Consecration is on an eight second cooldown. Place it in the wrong spot, and you have a problem. Have mobs that don't conveniently stay close together, and you have a problem. Have a mob that you need CCed in the consecrated area, and you have a problem. Especially when they are casters that are more or less unaffected by Holy Shield.
(2) Judgement is on a 10 second cooldown, eight seconds if you grab a very inconveniently located talent. If your judgement is resisted, you have no melee-range burst aggro for the time being (unless you spec Holy Shock, in which case you give up a lot of very good protection talents, or the mobs happen to be undead).
(3) You have only one taunt, and it's on a 15 second cooldown (a small eternity, in other words). If it gets resisted, too bad; let's hope the mob is stunnable. Druids at least have Challenging Roar as a backup, warriors have Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout. Blessing of Protection is only a partial answer -- casters and elemental mobs will completely ignore it.

(snip)

These are all true to some degree, but the fact that paladin tanking is more dependent on long cooldowns also means it involves much less frantic button-pushing and target-tabbing. With a warrior, you have to make sure to pay some amount of personal attention to each mob in order to keep healing aggro from being a problem; whereas a paladin can take care of this in one fell swoop either on the pull (AS) or immediately afterwards (consecration).

Way back when (over a year ago), the extra complexity of warrior tanking at least came with the benefit that you were a substantially better tank. I used to joke that tanking with a warrior was "easy mode" compared to paladin tanking. But these days it feels like the opposite: tanking on my warrior involves a ton of mental effort (I'm always fighting the rage bar), and doing it with a paladin is fairly calm by comparison. Paladin tanking has become more powerful without becoming substantially more complicated.

To be fair, I do have more experience tanking with a paladin recently.

As an aside, there are techniques to combat cognitive load: For example (speaking about warrior tanking here), in a large pull with six mobs or so, I plan out my first half dozen moves or so and commit them to memory before I pull; then I just execute them. Where I have to move, which mobs need to be hit with a sunder, how I separate the non-CCed mobs from the CCed ones so I can use Thunder Clap and Cleave, what I do on what cooldown, and so forth.

See, I think this kind of supports the stance that warrior tanking does require more from the player. Do you ever have to think that far through all your opening moves when you tank as a paladin? I sure don't.

Roana · 01/04/07, 6:43 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

These are all true to some degree, but the fact that paladin tanking is more dependent on long cooldowns also means it involves much less frantic button-pushing and target-tabbing. With a warrior, you have to make sure to pay some amount of personal attention to each mob in order to keep healing aggro from being a problem; whereas a paladin can take care of this in one fell swoop either on the pull (AS) or immediately afterwards (consecration).

I would agree with that assessment; all I'm saying is that paladins do have their own issues that they have to deal with when tanking. Warriors probably have the most convoluted tanking model, druids the most streamlined, and paladins are somewhere in between.

As an aside, there are techniques to combat cognitive load: For example (speaking about warrior tanking here), in a large pull with six mobs or so, I plan out my first half dozen moves or so and commit them to memory before I pull; then I just execute them. Where I have to move, which mobs need to be hit with a sunder, how I separate the non-CCed mobs from the CCed ones so I can use Thunder Clap and Cleave, what I do on what cooldown, and so forth.

See, I think this kind of supports the stance that warrior tanking does require more from the player. Do you ever have to think that far through all your opening moves when you tank as a paladin? I sure don't.

Generally, no (a few exceptions aside). And, well, I've never said otherwise, I was just mentioning something about my own approach to tanking. :) I've always argued that warrior tanking mechanics bring with them the heaviest cognitive load of all the tanking classes.

Oddly enough, my main issue with tanking on my paladin is that every mage and warlock apparently wants to AE groups of elites to death now, and I have a hard time explaining to them why this is inefficient and often even unwise, sometimes even after it gets people killed.

Snow · 01/04/07, 7:08 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Originally Posted by Roana

Originally Posted by Deathwing

Roana, why do you think Paladins aren't that much better, with the amount of buttons they need to tank? I honestly don't know, what would an average paladin do to tank?

It's not just buttons, it's the more general concept of cognitive load. Paladin tanking is dominated by long cooldown abilities (well, eight seconds can be an eternity when tanking), so cooldown management and awareness is a big part of paladin tanking:

(1) Consecration is on an eight second cooldown. Place it in the wrong spot, and you have a problem. Have mobs that don't conveniently stay close together, and you have a problem. Have a mob that you need CCed in the consecrated area, and you have a problem. Especially when they are casters that are more or less unaffected by Holy Shield.
(2) Judgement is on a 10 second cooldown, eight seconds if you grab a very inconveniently located talent. If your judgement is resisted, you have no melee-range burst aggro for the time being (unless you spec Holy Shock, in which case you give up a lot of very good protection talents, or the mobs happen to be undead).
(3) You have only one taunt, and it's on a 15 second cooldown (a small eternity, in other words). If it gets resisted, too bad; let's hope the mob is stunnable. Druids at least have Challenging Roar as a backup, warriors have Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout. Blessing of Protection is only a partial answer -- casters and elemental mobs will completely ignore it.

(snip)

These are all true to some degree, but the fact that paladin tanking is more dependent on long cooldowns also means it involves much less frantic button-pushing and target-tabbing. With a warrior, you have to make sure to pay some amount of personal attention to each mob in order to keep healing aggro from being a problem; whereas a paladin can take care of this in one fell swoop either on the pull (AS) or immediately afterwards (consecration).

Way back when (over a year ago), the extra complexity of warrior tanking at least came with the benefit that you were a substantially better tank. I used to joke that tanking with a warrior was "easy mode" compared to paladin tanking. But these days it feels like the opposite: tanking on my warrior involves a ton of mental effort (I'm always fighting the rage bar), and doing it with a paladin is fairly calm by comparison. Paladin tanking has become more powerful without becoming substantially more complicated.

To be fair, I do have more experience tanking with a paladin recently.

As an aside, there are techniques to combat cognitive load: For example (speaking about warrior tanking here), in a large pull with six mobs or so, I plan out my first half dozen moves or so and commit them to memory before I pull; then I just execute them. Where I have to move, which mobs need to be hit with a sunder, how I separate the non-CCed mobs from the CCed ones so I can use Thunder Clap and Cleave, what I do on what cooldown, and so forth.

See, I think this kind of supports the stance that warrior tanking does require more from the player. Do you ever have to think that far through all your opening moves when you tank as a paladin? I sure don't.

I think this has more to do with the issue of warriors having no aoe aggro move than anything else. Warriors are very much the single focus tanks; the more mobs, the more things that need to be tab-sundered before you can even start about using revenge. I've tanked both 5 mans and raid bosses with all 3 of my 60s (paladin, warrior, druid) and in general, the amount of "hectic feeling" is 1) warrior, 2) paladin, 3) druid. Warriors I find myself scrambling to tab/click/cycle through mobs. Paladin is much, much simpler- but that mainly has to do with the way our threat scales across multiple targets. If I had to get a JoR on each target to hold aggro I'd probably be pulling out some hair. 3) Druid I find simplest of all; I never really liked tanking with my druid, as the mitigation was implicit and the threat generation obvious. Even having a "shield block" type button (+3% dodge for 5 seconds!) would make it more entertaining.

I think of paladin tanking to have gone through 4 eras:
1) The SoF/JoF era. Our first golden age, though few knew it. Copious Aggro + we wore plate in the days when draconic deflector/quel was a dead giveaway for a guild's MT. Blessing of Sanctuary absorbs after armor. Judge Fury, hit consecrate, then go make yourself a sandwich as your paladin tanks.
2) The Review. Single target aggro is shot, warriors are wearing wrath while we are stuck with judgement. Suddenly consecrate + RF becomes crazy aoe aggro, but no one cares. I reroll druid in this phase to get the tank/healer hybrid I was searching for.
3) New signs of half-assed support from blizzard. ZG enchant has defense, deathbone mana/5. AQ plate drops without "Class: Warrior." Fear of faction inbalance seems to have them paralyzed.
4) 2.0. The new golden age? Spell coefficients buffed, actual mitigation talents and gear added.

What I find interesting in all this is that the only thing that really happened with druid tanks up until 2.0 was continual streamlining of the feral tree. Suddenly they decide warriors and druids are too different, so druids get crazy dodge and less health than previously. Yet throughout all of this, they never worried about static warrior threat(even when Shield slam came around, presenting an excellent talent for scaling threat with gear).

Pyros · 01/04/07, 7:29 PM

Originally Posted by Pantone

Originally Posted by Roana

(3) You have only one taunt, and it's on a 15 second cooldown (a small eternity, in other words). If it gets resisted, too bad; let's hope the mob is stunnable. Druids at least have Challenging Roar as a backup, warriors have Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout. Blessing of Protection is only a partial answer -- casters and elemental mobs will completely ignore it.

Interestingly, paladins may be able to stack spellhit, unlike warriors or druids. That may have some interesting ramifications with taunt and their threat moves--with holy damage and enough spell hit, a paladin may be the "safe" choice when you can't have a resist, parry, dodge, or whatnot.

Maybe was answered elsewhere but, can the paladin taunt actually be resisted? Since you cast it on a player, and then the mobs targetting that player come for you, is there a direct spell hit check from your spell hit to the mobs?

Roana · 01/04/07, 7:31 PM

Originally Posted by Pyros

Maybe was answered elsewhere but, can the paladin taunt actually be resisted? Since you cast it on a player, and then the mobs targetting that player come for you, is there a direct spell hit check from your spell hit to the mobs?

Yes, Righteous Defense can be resisted.

Apate · 01/04/07, 7:33 PM

Since it's presumably a binary resist check, can the chance to be resisted based on level (and so on) be completely overcome, in theory?

Pantone · 01/04/07, 8:19 PM

Originally Posted by Apate

Since it's presumably a binary resist check, can the chance to be resisted based on level (and so on) be completely overcome, in theory?

17% spellhit versus a level 63 mob should make taunt (almost?) unresistable for pallies, druids, and warriors. However, spellhit is impractical for druids and warriors due to gearing issues. If pally gear is itemized with spellhit, however, it will not only help with taunts but also with many of their aggro moves.

Still, misdirection will probably render many aggro problems moot.

Evalara · 01/04/07, 8:26 PM

Originally Posted by Apate

Since it's presumably a binary resist check, can the chance to be resisted based on level (and so on) be completely overcome, in theory?

Down to the minimum 1% in theory, though it would take a huge compromise in stat allocation to pile on +16% spell hit.

Athinira · 01/04/07, 9:00 PM

Originally Posted by Elwynn

I was going to ask if Druids are tanking in DPS gear most of the time since that is what I have gathered from Forums and my own experience in 5 to 20 man instances.

Its possible, btu not recommendable unless your DPS gear sports some heavy agility for the dodge. Damage mitigation has become more important than HP, so warriors will find it notoriously difficult at level 70 to slap on a 2h or DW and tank without a Shield if they have agro issues. Druids luckily don't have to go through that, but if you gimp your damage mitigation too much your healer will get trouble keeping up.

I honestly haven't tanked much in DPS gear at level 70 (was fun when tanking level 60 TBC instances though since mobs there had way lower armor so you could crit for insane amounts without worrying too much about damage mitigation. My 2.4k Mangle Crit with a 2.1k Maul crit right after each other never made it to the movie though since i deleted the footage by accident), but i don't recommend it either. Its possible, but tanking gear is still better and will still sport AP and crit so you can get some decent damage (= threat) done. Its way easier for a druid to tank in DPS gear than it is for a warrior to tank without a Shield, no Shield will kill even on some Trash pulls in TBC, so if you get a warrior that does it pray to that he knows what he is doing.

Kodus · 01/09/07, 12:08 PM

So since swipe no longer has the +aggro modifier how viable are bear tanks now? One of the things I was really looking forward to in TBC was the reduction of the warrior/healer/cc trifecta, but it looks like that's coming back, at least a bit, especially for Heroic level dungeons.

TheOnly · 01/09/07, 4:16 PM

Swipe and Maul are now very different than before. Swipe has no 1.75 threat multiplier. Maul is like Heroic Strike (Damage + static).

What they should have done is just make heroic strike and maul both be multipliers rather than static aggro adds, and made cleave something a prot warrior can use (with talents to make it hit 3 or 4 targets).

Now Paladin threat scales with gear, and Druids and Warriors will get stuck behind. Maybe Mangle is better than Maul for aggro now?

I smell more changes to aggro mechanics to all classes in patches over the next 2 months before Blizzard figures out what they're doing.

Grymm · 01/09/07, 5:15 PM

I think Blizzard was just use to balancing around warrior threat generation. Then they tweaked druids so that bear form was a better tanking alternative. Then they saw that a druid in good gear could establish an aggro ceiling much higher than a warrior of equivalent gear. Rather than tweak warriors who were the baseline (and thus need to tweak all fights in design that have important aggro components), they merely nerfed druids to warrior-like aggro mechanics. Now, the effectiveness of druid aggro spam vs. warrior aggro spam may not be equivalent, but now they operate along the same mechanics. Swipe is still probably superior to cleave for multi-target tanking being a spammable instant rather than an normal attack modifier. Maul and HS might be equivalent. Maul might be less frequent but the bonus threat might be roughly twice as high to balance out with 1.5s warrior HS spam. Mitigation seems closed to balanced or at least around where Blizzard wants it. A protection warrior has a lot more avenues than a feral druid for tanking abilities, but that has always been by design. Druid aggro mechanics will have to be tested to see where they measure out vs. warriors.

Ragnor · 01/09/07, 9:11 PM

Does this make paladin's the best single target threat tanks now? Pity there's still a massive stamina gap and a bunch of item points wasted on int and m/5sec on pally T4 and 5 which probably makes paladin probably not viable enough end game.

Guybrush · 01/09/07, 9:54 PM

Donno it seems those "wasted" item points if were at a warrior will probably be like chance to hit or +str, hardly what I call a big gear diffrence.

I found intellect extremly usefull on tanking items, especially tanking 5 men dungeons. Don't know much about raid encounters in the expansion to say how important those stats are regarding tanking gear as oppose to the warrior set.

Ragnor · 01/09/07, 10:47 PM

Guybrush,

There's a 69 stm difference between the Justicar (Paladin T4 tank) and Warbringer (Warrior T4 tank), warriors also have 1200 more hp naked.

Shik · 01/09/07, 11:29 PM

Regarding threat gen, I think its wise for Blizzard to keep it based around largely static abilities, and then just add new ranks of abilities as needed. Keeping threat gen and dps close enough together than it poses a challenge is a very important balancing act, complicated by both those factors changing with gear and spec.

The alternative is to use several scaling mechanics, but if those mechanics get away from you then you end up with a problem and have to start nerfing live content. As devs have said on many occasions, its a lot easier to buff afterwards than nerf. Anyone who spent a lot of time in EQ understood what it was like to see classes take massive hits.

Now that bears and prot paladins are effectively primary tanks, with strengths in different areas, it makes sense to make sure the bread and butter abilities are largely static so you can increase them as needed.

Athinira · 01/10/07, 6:34 AM

Originally Posted by Kodus

So since swipe no longer has the +aggro modifier how viable are bear tanks now? One of the things I was really looking forward to in TBC was the reduction of the warrior/healer/cc trifecta, but it looks like that's coming back, at least a bit, especially for Heroic level dungeons.

Druid tanking isn't broken with the latest issues. We have talked to druids playing with the nerf, and honestly they didn't note a difference.

First of all, for an unbuffed druid in mediocre to good gear, Swipe deals the same threat as pre.patch 2.0, aka. 1.12 and Before because the scaling with AP makes up for it (assuming we would have gotten a new Swipe rank if Swipe didn't get AP scaling im doing around 90% more damage with Swipe only losing 3 rage more because of Idol change, which is overall a buff to my threat generation compared to a month ago in 1.12). Mind you, this is unbuffed, with Battle Shout etc. im able to do even better, add Predatory Instinct as well to the crits adding an overall 30% * critchance (if you have a 25% critchance then 30% * 25% = 7.5%) threat increase.

Maul is another case however, but doing the theorycraft shows that its not bad. Maul itself should, if spammed every cooldown, add up to exactly or close to same threat per second as Devastate does after the buff Devastate got this patch. Add Mangle and Lacerate into the mix to compensate for Shield Slam and warrior autoattack+Heroic Strike spam and druids should still be 5-10% ahead of prot warriors unbuffed, 12-18% ahead of warriors when raid buffed (possibly even more, might be 25% raidbuffed since druid scaling is still way better). These are all estimations and Theorycraft, but honestly, except for Bleed Immune mobs i don't feel my threat generation got nerfed into, its still large, useful and i believe is larger than warriors. Maul is a bit worse of than pre-TBC, but Swipe is actually better of and we got Lacerate and Mangle added into the mix.

Druid tanking will be fine. However what really worries me is paladin tanking. If Swipe needed a nerf, then how the hell do the developers plan to excuse Consecration Ticks of 110 at the same time generating way more threat than Swipe on up to TEN targets (TPS per target will probably exceed Swipe on up to 13 targets since the AOE nerf)? I play a 60 paladin as well (he is my current main), and from a Druid PoV i must admit that if Paladins don't get the nerfbat to consecration tanking, im gonna be pissed.

Guybrush · 01/10/07, 6:39 AM

Originally Posted by Ragnor

Guybrush,

There's a 69 stm difference between the Justicar (Paladin T4 tank) and Warbringer (Warrior T4 tank), warriors also have 1200 more hp naked.

Actually the diffrence is 44 stamina, T4 paladin is 162 as oppose to 206 a warriors gains. And looking at both sets I can honestly say that the intellect on the paladin T4 is not the reason, it mostly comes down to +dmg which takes a larger chunk of item points.

Then again we don't really know what the total stamina values will be fully buffed in a raid enviroment. And if it really matters if a tank have 13k stamina or 15k. Paladin threat is superior to both warriors and druids, while the laters will have a bit more health and the warrior a bit more mitigation.

My guess is tanking will come down eventually to the encounter in hand. If threat will be an issue I believe a paladin will be your best option, in a fight like patchwerk a druid or a warrior will be far better. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Athinira · 01/10/07, 6:47 AM

Originally Posted by Guybrush

Paladin threat is superior to both warriors and druids, while the laters will have a bit more health and the warrior a bit more mitigation.

Actually druids will be the highest melee damage mitigation tanks. Seems like they will be able to push their dodge a large chunk above warriors dodge+parry. Couple that with armor values that is more effective than warrior armor+defensive stance (Shield and Shield Block will compensate but not enough) and druids will be sitting as the highest melee mitigation tanks in the game, while paladins and warriors will be superior for spelldamage mitigation (especially Spell Reflect makes up something special).

Maax · 01/10/07, 9:07 AM

I think the biggest effect this will have on druid tanking is the public perception of druid tanks being worse has tipped back to the other extreme again. Even if it has very little effect on our actual tanking ability, the Druid Tank brand recognition took a pretty big hit.

Athinira · 01/10/07, 9:26 AM

Originally Posted by Maax

I think the biggest effect this will have on druid tanking is the public perception of druid tanks being worse has tipped back to the other extreme again. Even if it has very little effect on our actual tanking ability, the Druid Tank brand recognition took a pretty big hit.

Actually id disagree. Most people forget patch notes fast, and we will have plenty of time and chances to demonstrate it doesn't affect us seriously. Having said that, calling ourself the "best threat generating tank" in the game is out of the question though.

slitz · 01/10/07, 10:38 AM

Originally Posted by Athinira

Actually druids will be the highest melee damage mitigation tanks. Seems like they will be able to push their dodge a large chunk above warriors dodge+parry. Couple that with armor values that is more effective than warrior armor+defensive stance (Shield and Shield Block will compensate but not enough) and druids will be sitting as the highest melee mitigation tanks in the game, while paladins and warriors will be superior for spelldamage mitigation (especially Spell Reflect makes up something special).

But you're totally disregarding shield block when saying that aren't you? While it's very hard to mathematically calculate how much it actually effect mitigation, it's still a significant boost for warriors (and this is also disregarding that you can't crit/crush on a block since rumors says this is going to change).
While block didn't do much in the 1-60 game, it will do a ton in the 60-70 + end game, especially with the focus on block amount from the start of 60.

Arzy · 01/10/07, 10:52 AM

Originally Posted by Athinira

Druid Tanking.

Dude, I think you got a little too much of a hardon for you Druid to realize how insane you sound

Blizzard has said flat out that Warriors are INTENDED to be the #1 choice for tanking. If anything threatens that fact, they will change it. Example: Druids just got a threat nerf

You will never be the #1 choice for tanking in WoW. Period. The developers of this game will not allow it. It completely negates the role of a prot warrior and they cannot make a class obsolete.

However, Blizzard does want to provide alternatives to Warriors as tanks so guilds dont sit around all day waiting for their Warriors to logon. But if both are logged on, a guild should choose a prot warrior over a feral druid to tank (disregarding any gear gap)

sulliwan · 01/10/07, 10:54 AM

I did some rough mitigation calculations based on the armor numbers Athinira gave me yesterday for lvl 70 and assuming 15% crushing rate for druid and warrior never getting a crushing, the druid still takes about 8-10% less damage than the warrior(yes I included defensive stance). The exact mitigation from shieldblock is difficult to include since it depends mostly on how hard the mobs are hitting. I suppose a good estimate would be that if you mitigate more than 10% of each hit with shield block, you are the better tank choice, if not, the druid is.