Feral talents/abilities - WotLK discussion - Page 41

Liar · 08/13/08, 12:31 AM

Originally Posted by Promethius

How far apart is prot dps and fury dps, and where should we fall in between to be balanced?

I'd say Prot DPS is around 300-400 DPS less in T6 gear than Fury DPS. This is, however, not counting the added benefit of improved BS and Demo a Fury Warrior brings, which widens get the gap more.

Originally Posted by Promethius

With current feral dps being more around prot dps than fury dps, and prot warriors getting dps buffs in the expansion, it would feel somewhat demoralizing if a MT specced prot warrior is capable of switching gear and out dpsing a feral druid, while being a better magic, aoe, and fast hit physical damage tank when wearing his tanking gear.

Maybe our Feral Druids don't have much experience DPSing or worse gear than I do, but I usually do atleast their DPS as Prot DPS. My personal record so far is 1850 DPS on Teron as MT specced Prot DPS. It also isn't easy to say where Feral Druid DPS should fall but keep in mind that non-tanking Ferals are cursed by having Innervate, Rebirth and LotP. You have to keep that in mind when you try comparing yourself with a DPS Prot Warrior because they only bring unimproved shouts (and if they TC, their DPS plummets by quite a bit). Oh, Prot DPS is also higher aggro than Ferals so there might be some point where Prot DPS will stagnate just due to the threat ceiling which Cat's don't have in that form.

Coldturkey · 08/13/08, 12:48 AM

I think a possible solution to everyone's tanking flavor is to assign 2 roles to each tank instead of just 1 niche role. Making druids the physical/multimob tank (ie less than 4), paladins aoe/physical tanks, deathknights could be the magic/aoe tanks, and warriors filling the role of good physical/magical mitgation. That would round everyone out a bit giving tanks the ability to shine in more than role but still leaving each class with a complex job that would make them better. To better explain, warriors would be the multipurpose tank they are right now, being probably perferable for single tank bosses that do substantial physical and magical damage. Druids could fill the role of the physical migitation small pack mob tank, for instance the adds on muru but assume they were all physical hard hitting instead of having a caster. Deathknights and paladins could take the role of large scale aoe tanking with paladins high block making them preferable for meleeing mobs and deathknight's magic reduction for caster style mobs. That would level the playing field for every tank and the overlapping specalizations would allow another class to pick up their slack. This would work out assuming you have 3/4 tanking classes available.

ionasej · 08/13/08, 2:53 AM

On the our niche

Well the niche thing is just required because Blizzard cannot make sure that the differences between tank classes in regards to their raid effectiveness is almost similar. To reach this goal the extensively discussed itemization and stat conversion point is important as well as the basic (magic) damage reduction that applies to every class but not the Feral.

We are trying to move all 4 tanks a little closer together so that, for example, warriors don't have to tank heroics without pants on in order to have enough rage, and to make maintaining threat on multiple mobs less frustrating.

We still would like all 4 tanks to have their own niche, and unless we change something down the road, the design is still for the warrior to be the best tank for single bosses that hit hard for physical damage (which to be honest, has tended to be most of them so far).

Source: Blue on Icebound Fortitude
See also: Blue on tanking comparison

To fix things just Paladins and Warriors should have a tanking niche and Druids and Death Knights just the same generic tanking ability that all 4 tanks should share. The niche should just be a small bonus, nothing like Shield Reflect (RoS) or Shield Block (shear). For example Warriors would have an oh shit buttons and Paladins would be kings of AoE tanking. The legitimation for Ferals and DKs is that they a.) do better off-tanking. they can role-swap better, and b.) can fulfill their off-role a lot better. Off-roles for those 4 tanks would be DPS and healing. That way every raid could bring at least 3 tanks - maybe 4.

Given equal skill and equal gear and a rogue/warlock/mage/hunter damage base line of 100%:
- Druids in tanking gear should do 70% damage of a rogue single or 30% AoE.
- Death Knights in tanking gear should do 50% single or AoE damage.
- Protection Paladins in tanking gear should do 20% single target or 70% AoE.
- Protection Warriors in tanking gear should do 30% damage.

In DPS gear though you should see numbers like:
- Druids in DPS gear should do 90% damage off a rogue or in heal gear heal 40% of a Restoration Druid.
- Death Knights in DPS gear should do 80% damage solo target and 120% AoE.
- Protection Paladins in DPS gear should do 40% damage of a rogue and 80% AoE or in heal gear should heal 60% of a Holy Paladin.
- Protection Warriors in DPS gear should do 60% damage.

On other issues

Infected Wounds / Improved Leader of the Pack
IW 1/3Pts is a very good investment, after that it diminishes. What about making iLotP the same
Relating WotLK PvE Feral build
Suggestion iLotP 1/2: Your Leader of the Pack ability also causes affected targets to have a 50% chance to heal themselves for 5% of their total health when they critically hit with a melee or ranged attack. The healing effect cannot occur more than once every 10 sec. Instead of 2% by 100% at max every 6sec? Can one suggest that on the beta forums? 2/2 could reduce the cooldown from 10 to 5sec to make it still beneficial.

Survival of the Fittest / Primal Tenacity / Daze / (Magical) damage reduction
And in regards to SotF and PT - reducing chance to be dazed by maybe 10/20/30% should be on one of those talents and damage reduction by 2/4/6% or magical damage reduction 5/10/15% on another one. Had that been suggested yet on the beta forums and do you agree?

King of the Jungle
KotJ is a more or less cat specific talent right now. Why not add a small bear bonus and fix our missing scaling with strength: In addition 3 strength reduce damage taken by 1 (1pt) - 3pts would be 3 strength reduce damage taken by 3. After fixing that only defense rating needs to be addressed (and conversion should end up pushing benefits from -crit, block, parry, miss, dodge into the latter if there is no more additional benefit from -crit, block, parry) - that would fix DKs scaling with defense rating as well.

Omen of Clarity
OOC should be a non magic passive base class self buff. Right now every spec, be it Balance, Feral or Restoration aims at that talent. Example WotLK PvE Balance build (that talents spec also shows why Master Shapeshifter should be unlocked and tier 2 from a PvE Moonkin's point of view)

Barkskin
In regards to the addition/changes off Icebound Fortitude, Shield Wall and Divine Protection, Barkskin should be changed to 3mins and cost 50 rage, 25 energy or 10 mana (castable in forms).

Rend and Tear
Should affect any direct damage feral attacks (Maul, Mangle, Swipe, Shred, ...) to justify putting points into it. If to add Mangle(Cat) depends on if Mangle(Cat) surpasses Shred (and it should not).

In regards to PvP
Example WotLK Feral PvP build.
Do you agree that there are too many talent point investments to make?
I suggest to add a bonus to Lacerate on the Swipe talent and move the stealth bonus into the base class abilities? Further why not make FFF trainable? Another suggestion would be to make Predatory Instincts a 3pt instead of 5pt talent to reduce bloat on mixed bear/cat talents (=we need those for PvP)?

p.s.: If you happen to be on beta (lucky one) - this is an important thread to bring up (Feral) tanking issues: WoW Forums -> Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King

Nathanyel · 08/13/08, 4:38 AM

Originally Posted by ionasej

Druids in DPS gear should do 90% damage [...] of a Restoration Druid.

Aaaah watch your wording, what if a Blue sees this? "Oh, they want to do less damage than a Resto? Done." :P

ionasej · 08/13/08, 12:23 PM

Can anyone on Beta test if a.) shifting out of this works and b.) Blessing of Freedom?
=> Blue on Chains of Ice Snare effect: WoW Forums -> > Full Death Knight Review <

Skytor · 08/13/08, 1:00 PM

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)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

Our goal in Lich King is for all 4 tanking classes to be viable.

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.

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.

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.
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 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.

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.

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.

We would still like to have tanking "flavors" as you put it, but I want to be a little careful when I say that because some people have taken that to mean that their class won't be good enough to tank the content they want.

If druids had gigantic health pools but lower mitigation and avoidance than a warrior, that would be tanking flavor. It would mean you heal the bears a little different -- they might drain more mana, but the damage would be more predictable. In really long fights, the warrior might have an advantage. In a fight where a boss hit quickly for less damage per hit, the warrior might have an advantage. In fights with periods of really big damage, the druid might have an advantage. In magic fights where armor was less of a factor, the druid might have an advantage. This is just an example. Our overriding concern is making sure the tanks have the tools, threat and mitigation they need to tank. A secondary concern is making sure they don't feel too similar.

Seems to me that this is pretty much what the non-warrior tanks have always wanted - real parity - no more "warrior required" fights and a real intention of parity in tanking.

Will they manage it? - who knows but its nice to see the aim stated

ionasej · 08/13/08, 1:02 PM

Originally Posted by Skytor

Seems to me that this is pretty much what the non-warrior tanks have always wanted - real parity - no more "warrior required" fights and a real intention of parity in tanking.

Will they manage it? - who knows but its nice to see the aim stated

First time they really try - so far it does for example look good on the Protection Paladin side - lets see how the other two tanks turn out.

Toranshalur · 08/13/08, 1:33 PM

In response to Umah's suggestions on Imp. lotp and IW, and daze/magic reduction on the other talents; Improving those talents (which I agree should be done) has the knock-on effect of making rend and tear even less worth taking.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000
would be the tanking build of choice for maximum threat and survivability, as you can see there's no room for primal tenacity, or even 3/3 IW. You could give up improved lotp for IW but it's more likely that in a 25man thunderclap or similar will be available and so the hp regen is more powerful. Also shredding attacks could be skipped if swipe is just better than lacerate, but that would reflect bad game design.

Rend and tear isn't an amazing return for 5 points, so you might as well take 3/3 KotJ for threat if you're only going to be tanking, and that gives you points free for feral aggression, brutal impact or various other useful places, which might be more worth it than R&T.

Anyway, my point is that rend and tear is next to useless as a tanking talent, unless threat is really tight on long bossfights - so why not just make it a cat-only talent and boost it's power? Only druids going for pure dps are going to consider taking it, so why not make it worth the investment? Add the mangle(cat) portion of Savage Fury into r&t and you've allowed cat druids to take all the dps talents, still with 2 points for ILotP.

kalbear · 08/13/08, 1:53 PM

Anyway, my point is that rend and tear is next to useless as a tanking talent

I see this a lot and am a bit confused. As it stands right now maul is about 50% of total threat. Therefore, each R&T point increases your threat by 1%. That doesn't seem trivial to me. Whether threat is important or not is another question, but there are plenty of other talents in the tree that add similar benefit.

Toranshalur · 08/13/08, 2:16 PM

Well, it's not that it's a bad talent by itself, more that (unless threat is seriously tight) there are better talents to take. For example, king of the jungle gives extra damage (=threat) every enrage cooldown, probably more useful for trash and nice for getting an early lead on bosses, while at the same time improving your cat dps more than r&t if you should ever need to go into dps mode.

As to maul being currently 50% of threat, well threat mechanics certainly are nowhere near final yet, and the threat could be mainly from the base innate threat of the ability, not the extra damage.

I might be completely wrong, and rend and tear might end up being awesome for tanking, but it doesnt look like that at the moment.

ionasej · 08/13/08, 2:48 PM

Originally Posted by Toranshalur

In response to Umah's suggestions on Imp. lotp and IW, and daze/magic reduction on the other talents; Improving those talents (which I agree should be done) has the knock-on effect of making rend and tear even less worth taking.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000
would be the tanking build of choice for maximum threat and survivability.
...

Even with my suggested talent changes I would prefer this build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

Originally Posted by Toranshalur

I might be completely wrong, and rend and tear might end up being awesome for tanking, but it doesnt look like that at the moment.

Well they could also buff Rend and Tear and allow 5pts to get you 1 or 2 static damage reduction per strength. Though the name does not fit (thats why I did not put it there - up in my suggestion)

Sigtyr · 08/13/08, 10:26 PM

I agree with OOC being a base-spell. It should have been a long time ago.

and Master Shapeshifter should be at least tier 2, perhaps even tier 1, it could go on furor's place which in turn could move to tier 1 in the feral tree.

I've always wondered why the druid tree's had such weak/partly useless talents in their tier 1 spots where as other classes get + X% [stat]-talents.
I don't mind having to put points into the resto tree or even balance tree for a feral spec but being forced to get useless talents is ridiculous.

By the way, did anyone compare the talents in the druid trees that are pretty much equal to another class' talents but cost more points or are higher up in trees? It has been unfair like this in the past and Earth and Moon seems to be a bit high up and expensive compared to Shadow Weaving in the priest's shadow tree, especially since it stacks 5 times and lasts longer.
(Keep it a feral discussion though, this was just an example given to compare 2 classes with pretty much equal talents)

Jone · 08/13/08, 11:44 PM

Originally Posted by Sigtyr

By the way, did anyone compare the talents in the druid trees that are pretty much equal to another class' talents but cost more points or are higher up in trees? It has been unfair like this in the past and Earth and Moon seems to be a bit high up and expensive compared to Shadow Weaving in the priest's shadow tree, especially since it stacks 5 times and lasts longer.
(Keep it a feral discussion though, this was just an example given to compare 2 classes with pretty much equal talents)

Ferals get the better of most "put in x points for y%" talents. Sharpened Claws is 3 points for 6% crit, where everyone else pays 5 for 5%. Feral Instinct is as much stealth increase for 3 points as rogues get for 5, and we get a bear bonus on the same talents to boot. Paladins and warriors use 5 points to get +10% armor, we use 3, even though 10% armor is more desirable for us. We pay 5 (or 8 really) points for +20% to stamina, paladins pay 7 for 17%, warriors 5 for 10%. There's nothing for ferals to complain about there.

• Astrylian · 08/14/08, 12:53 AM

Savage Roar buffed to 35% in tonight's build.

ionasej · 08/14/08, 5:50 AM

Originally Posted by Jone

Ferals get the better of most "put in x points for y%" talents.
[...]
There's nothing for ferals to complain about there.

Compare a 0/0/0 Warrior in Underbog vs a 0/0/0 Druid in Underbog - Tanking => no thanks.
Compare a 0/0/0 Rogue in Underbog vs a 0/0/0 Druid in Underbog - DPSing (lol) as Kitty => eh no.
Compare a 0/0/0 Priest healing in Underbog vs a 0/0/0 Druid in Underbog (healing) => works.

Conclusion => our grateful talents are REQUIRED because our base class abilities mostly/only scale around healing.
Its nothing we should or have to whine about but neither something that is so great. If more (passive) Feral and Balance abilities/buffs were moved into the base class, we would be more of a true hybrid and talents could be less streamlined. In today's TBC (and for sure WoTLK) every class has to specialize.

@ Savage Roar: that is nice, but I still miss some fix for Haste Rating as SR pushes our dependency on one stat (AP), as it seems to scale Omen of Clarity but seems not to scale our 2h white damage so well.

At least 35% more AP means 35% more damage by base weapon as well - and BTW out of 1 STR we would get (raid buffed if BoK stays as it is) 1 * 2 * 1.06 * 1.1 * 1.35 = 3.1482 - thats massive. Out of 2 Feral AP we get 1 * 1 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.35 = 1.78200 AP - that's a nice boost too.

2 AP => 2.97 AP
1 STR => 3.1482 AP
2 FAP => 3.56400 AP

Can one calculate white damage of a naked Rogue on 80 with SWP dual swords vs a naked Druid on 80 with SWP weapon and just add 100/200/400 haste rating? The rogue should have imp S&D up all time, and we SR...
... or give me a hint how to do it.

Nathariel · 08/14/08, 5:54 AM

If druids had gigantic health pools but lower mitigation and avoidance than a warrior, that would be tanking flavor. It would mean you heal the bears a little different -- they might drain more mana, but the damage would be more predictable. In really long fights, the warrior might have an advantage. In a fight where a boss hit quickly for less damage per hit, the warrior might have an advantage. In fights with periods of really big damage, the druid might have an advantage. In magic fights where armor was less of a factor, the druid might have an advantage. This is just an example. Our overriding concern is making sure the tanks have the tools, threat and mitigation they need to tank. A secondary concern is making sure they don't feel too similar.

Does anyone else feel that this is looking more like a major shift in our position?

From my perspective it seems that we will no longer have the massive armor advantage over the other tanks, as well as losing out on avoidance as well, in exchange we will appear to get more stamina..

The talk of bears having an advantage in magic damage fights has me a little perplexed also. At present we take full damage from them and I haven't noticed anything about Warriors and Paladins losing their inbuilt or talented reductions.

Duilliath · 08/14/08, 6:16 AM

Originally Posted by Nathariel

Does anyone else feel that this is looking more like a major shift in our position?

From my perspective it seems that we will no longer have the massive armor advantage over the other tanks, as well as losing out on avoidance as well, in exchange we will appear to get more stamina..

The talk of bears having an advantage in magic damage fights has me a little perplexed also. At present we take full damage from them and I haven't noticed anything about Warriors and Paladins losing their inbuilt or talented reductions.

It just means we're less likely to die from a big burst - whether it be magic or physical.

If warriors reduce the damage by 16% and we get a 20% larger healthpool* than them, effectively the magic hits us for less dangerous amounts.

30k Health warrior - 15k damage.
Warrior takes 12.6k -> 17.4k health (58%) remaining

36k Health Druid - 15k damage -> 21k (58.3r%) remaining

%Health remaining is close enough to not be a major issue, but the Druid will 'feel' saver than the warrior.

'Sides, it was just an example given. It wasn't stated as being fixed in stone that this'll be what Druids get.

[* Numbers just for pure illustration, nothing more]

Skytor · 08/14/08, 6:30 AM

Originally Posted by Nathariel

Does anyone else feel that this is looking more like a major shift in our position?

From my perspective it seems that we will no longer have the massive armor advantage over the other tanks, as well as losing out on avoidance as well, in exchange we will appear to get more stamina..

The talk of bears having an advantage in magic damage fights has me a little perplexed also. At present we take full damage from them and I haven't noticed anything about Warriors and Paladins losing their inbuilt or talented reductions.

Yes it is a big shift - and a somewhat worrying one - the theorycraft has always shown that stacking avoidence is much better than stamina as things currently stand ... avoidence scales exponentially: the more avoidence you have the better the next point of avoidence is (in terms of time to live / effective health). Stamina scales linearly in terms of TTL.

Current tanks stack stamina to the point of not being insta killed then pretty much add avoidence after that.

Where would this huge health pool come from? - is rogue leather going to get even more sta - are we going to get even bigger % boosts to stamina from talents

Really I think they should give up on tank uniqueness - tanking its not an end in itself - its an artefact of the game mechanics - a role that has to be filled to allow group PvE play - give each class the same tools and boosts to it under different names and leave it at.

Yes it could make the game a bit blander - but really who would care - as long as tanking was challenging (fun) for the tank, the rest of a group only really cares that the tank holds agro and doesn't die.

Duilliath · 08/14/08, 6:42 AM

Something else - it's been stated we'll get enchants in forms (more specifically, Mongoose), but I've heard very little else.

I have no clue how to calculate this, so would someone be willing to work out the following so I/we get a basic idea ?
I know stats will change in WotLK, but just want to get a rough feeling and I would expect the new WotLK enchants to scale in a similar way compared to each other anyway.

Catform: +35 agi vs Mongoose for DPS
Assumptions: same proc rate as it is now, specials work (as they do for rogues)

Bearform: +35 agi vs Mongoose for tanking
Assumptions: same proc rate as it is now, specials work (swipe gives *one* chance to proc) as does Maul.

Carlos · 08/14/08, 6:43 AM

From Ghostcrawlers Post:

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.

I think, they are currently wild testing all abilities they have had ideas for, but they don't have a clue how the endgame will pan out. I think, that is a real threat to a release date this year even when they already announced it to investors in the company.

Well, even with may be getting an infrigement. With stating the above by in a blue post on beta forums, this is fundamentaly different from Blizzards usual policy to say nothing till it is nearly completed. From my point of view they have opened Beta too early in their development stage. Correct me if I am wrong, but we had changes during TBC beta but not as wild as he is suggesting in the quote above.

Skytor · 08/14/08, 7:01 AM

The issue with more health vs more avoidence / mitigation is:

Boss A does an attack for 15k (post equal mitigation) every 3 seconds - with the "idea" being that the tank dies in 2 hits if not healed between them

Warrior takes 12.6K, druid takes 15k - so for the fight to be "balanced" per the design druid needs 30k hp to the warriors 25.2k ... about 20% more (co-incidently the amount added by our +sta talent)

In addition to staying alive - we have to consider healer mana - if this fight lasts 10 mins the druid is sucking up 480k more healing (something over 48k mana at current conversion rates...) so we also need to either return mana when healed or take 20% more healing to maintain equality.

And thats just the damage reduction offered by defence stance - it gets much much worse when you start to add in avoidence strings...

If i get some time i'd like to work out the "chance of death" after X sec in the above fight with differing rates of avoidence, and how much extra health would be needed to make them equal at various avoidence levels.

This logical issue I can already see coming out of this is - if you set the death at 4 unhealed "swings" of which the warrior avoids 2 and the druid avoids 1 (50% vs 25% avoidence) the druid needs 45k health to the warriors 25.2K and therefore never dies in 2 hits while the warrior can (and will 25% of the time).

Shakes · 08/14/08, 7:04 AM

It's only mid-August, which leaves 4 months of development to get it out "this year" if they need it. I also have no doubt they've got level 80 content they haven't pushed onto the beta server yet.

This is how betas are supposed to work: throw your work out to a wider audience and see what works and what you need to fix before release. I'd be a lot more worried if they weren't calling it a work in progress. All they're really saying is there's no point painting the detail until they get the broad brush strokes in place, they're not going to waste time adjusting abilities up and down a couple of percent when for various reasons it could all be invalidated tomorrow.

You've also got to consider theorycraft is fine, but encounters make a big difference. For the bears having a bigger health pool example, depending on encounters, perhaps healers might be able to save mana because they know they can heal purely re-actively with a bear vs pro-actively vs a warrior. The theorycraft in isolation can't show that, just that bears take more damage which needs more healing.

Skytor · 08/14/08, 8:05 AM

Originally Posted by Shakes

You've also got to consider theorycraft is fine, but encounters make a big difference. For the bears having a bigger health pool example, depending on encounters, perhaps healers might be able to save mana because they know they can heal purely re-actively with a bear vs pro-actively vs a warrior. The theorycraft in isolation can't show that, just that bears take more damage which needs more healing.

I agree that encounters make a big difference - but i'd say that an encounter where one tank can be healed re-actively and another needs pro-active healing co-ordination is effectively trivial for one tank.

We have been here before and the "gem for stamina" bears lost the argument

Duilliath · 08/14/08, 8:10 AM

Originally Posted by Skytor

I agree that encounters make a big difference - but i'd say that an encounter where one tank can be healed re-actively and another needs pro-active healing co-ordination is effectively trivial for one tank.

We have been here before and the "gem for stamina" bears lost the argument

And I say we're making a big fuss out of nothing - Ghostcrawler specifically stated it was nothing but an example, so I've got no clue why people are getting up in arms about something that hasn't even been committed to paper yet, let alone hit the beta.

Valerian · 08/14/08, 11:12 AM

With the changes to downranking I'd be very wary of speculating on any tanking "niches". The old "spam the tank" strategy may not be feasible anymore without running out of mana, which will require a shift on both the tanks side AND the healers side. Reactive healing (which tends to favour a larger hp pool) may become more prevalent. It really depends on the fight length, how hard the bosses hit and how mana efficient (or inefficient) the new spells are. All these can create "niches" that need to be filled, tank wise.