bellator

My perspective on a couple of these is a little different

1) Whilst Avenger's shield glyph is nice for bosses for the extra threat I personally find no threat issues on bosses, and thus prefer the original version of the ability as it help more in control trash packs and the like.

2) It is certainly not possible to defense cap quicker in wotlk than you could in tbc. When tbc first came out you could almost defense cap through the quest rewards on the the way to 70, with next to no additional work required. Here this is not possible. I'm not saying it's hard. Once can get the mats for the craftable blue armor in an evening then spend a couple evening in heroics filling out ring/neck/trinket slots etc, and get a shield crafted / badge loot etc. However it's not easier than tbc. The problem i see is not that it is hard (or relatively harder) to get defense capped, but more that you are restriced on which items you can get. You are forced to go for the high def items and not really pay attention to the other stats they provide.

I do agree with the BR/BV point, and am very happy for it, and as you say threat is insane, i'm just focusing on defensive stats (which a spellpower weapon cant give).

Stamina is also a little overhwhelming as well. I did a naxx 10-man last night, and fully raid buffed/flasked i hit 35khp (and i only have 1 drop from 10 mans so far, the gloves)

 

jere

I like this idea, having Combat Expertise or Sacred Duty increase our base health by some percentage (so it scales as we level, but never scales with gear stats) and the other give us the 6% stamina scaling (which would match warriors) would be an interesting way to handle things.

The base health scaling would need to be enough to cover the base health difference and the ranged slot, or it would need to cover the base health difference and we would need only slightly higher scaling (haven't done the math for a good number) to cover the ranged slot difference.

 

Mortehl

You'd think that but to be honest with you, hotr a timed consecrate, and good positioning eliminates the need for a multi hit frisbee. I don't have trouble controlling trash packs at all. OTOH, the extra oomf of a 200% AS.. Dear god It is amazing.

On another note, yes the Seal of Vengeance glyph is hot shit too. GG almost dodge capping as a dwarf without any expertise gear.


Again time invested from one to another. You can get yourself defense capped in 2 days from when you ding 80 and be in heroics immediately getting yourself ready for Naxx. I felt my personal 60-70 experience was tougher then my 70-80 on the beta and that is the point of reference I use to make my pontifications.

Indeed. I think there is WAY too much hemming and hawwing going on over this.

Are you a Paladin? I'm sitting at 25k raid buffed atm. Granted I'm still in a boatload of blues though. I recognize my HP is low. I refuse to use any PVP gear on the beta as I'm trying to test the pure PVE aspects of the game. I also have belt, both rings, trinket, and helm from my T6/Sunwell gear on. once I finally replace those then perhaps I could see that kind of HP.

 

◊ Cathela

One of the issues for a "new" tank in WotLK reaching the defense cap is that there's only one blue/green trinket in WotLK that gives +defense. So if you're carrying (I assume) the Gurtogg trinket into WotLK, you've got a decently good head start over someone starting from scratch.

That could be fixed with some itemization work, but I think it still goes back to bellator's point earlier: Certainly it's possible to reach the defense cap in blues and greens at 80, but it constrains your gear choice quite a bit, and basically removes a lot of the tanking gear from consideration.

EDIT: Also, regarding the health thing, does 25k feel comfortable in Naxx? A lot of this discussion about becoming uncrittable depends on how much stamina tanks need to have.

And Bell, if you really do have 35k, how does that feel? Just right? Too much?

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Denogran

25k buffed is pretty low, no? I have 24,500 in a stacked group right now, and while that'll drop in 3.02 (commanding and imp not stacking), I'd be pretty disappointed if my stamina only increases by a coupla thousand over the next 10 levels.

 

◊ Cathela

Well, get ready for disappointment, then.

A lot of the level 80 blue tanking plate has nominally higher stamina than T6/Sunwell pieces, but when you factor in the relative lack of gem slots, you end up in about the same place as far as stamina on gear goes. I haven't made a serious attempt to gear up for Naxx or anything, so maybe I just haven't seen enough gear to judge, but I really haven't seen any major stamina upgrades.

As I recall, the best-geared pre-BC tanks in full Naxx gear reached right around 10k without popping cooldowns, and a typical blue-geared TBC tank sat at around 13-14k. If you account for the change in the itemization cost of stamina, that puts them at just about the same place. So yeah, it looks like the starting level for WotLK tank hp is the same as the peak of TBC tank hp (and it makes sense as a design goal, if you think about it.)

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Halion

Regarding the Avenger's Shield glyph, I will be using it. The 2 staples seem to be Righteous Defense (no resisted taunts is win) and Seal of Vengeance (+10 expertise is really nice). This leaves you with 1 more Major slot for a threat glyph. Both the Judgement and AS glyphs are threat increases.

In a standard 969 cycle, you'll be using Judgement every 9 seconds, and trying to sub in an AS every 30. I haven't bothered to do the number crunching as threat really hasn't been a concern. If they lower the threat output of tanks to make threat become more of a pressing issue, I'll look into changing my view. However, my feeling is that the AS glyph is more threat on a single target than the Judgement one.

Now, the AS glyph, with the new 10 second daze, hitting 3 mobs is more annoying than helpful. My favorite new trick is to assign the target I'm going to smack to be CC'ed (obviously not sapped, but sheep / hex / root / shackle / trap all work fine). Throw my shield, that mob gets CC'ed, the bonus is I already have aggro, when the CC breaks, that mob comes running right for me, not the CC'er. Then pick up the rest of the pack with HotR and Consecrate. I don't have to wait 15 seconds for the mobs to actually get to me this way. I'd much rather my shield had a 3 second silence than a 10 second daze, but that is another matter.

 

Helot

Imo, Taunts are for trash. Most bosses cannot be taunted, So increasing your threat on a boss is better than having an unresistable taunt.

Not that the glyph is bad, but seeing as how our threat has been buffed to gung-ho levels, DPS shouldn't have to worry too much about pulling aggro (on the main target). I think the glyph is useful, especially if your undergeared for an instance group (T4 running w/ T6 players, for example), where you will be taunting all the time.

Depending on the wording/implementation of the Blood Glyph, I may see myself taking that for OTing roles. If it's a straight 10->20% SA, it would be great. Damage yourself, deal holy threat, get extra mana back to sustain your threat.

If it's 10%->11%.. well, that's pretty useless.

Even so, I'd only be taking that glyph if that was the case. I find myself using Righteousness over SoV anyway, but that's because of the less-than-100% chance to stack that we have right now. Come 3.0, I'll be using SoR for trash, and SoV for bosses. (Assuming i don't go ret. Apparently it's pretty OP.)

Chaith logs on
<zyl> Actually, I do like my paladin. He's fun to play, but don't tell Chaith.
<chaith> Looks like i logged in at the right time
<zyl> ....
<zyl> I pressed enter half a second after you logged on.

 

Halion

There are enough bosses that require taunted transitions that that glyph will be used by every serious tank. How many times did you wipe on old 4H because your warriors didn't have 4pc T3? How many Brutallus wipes are because the taunt got resisted and the healers switched targets, and the boss didn't? How many ZA timed runs failed getting their bear because a taunt failed on Narlak and the MT got the bleed debuff and the bleeds?

Clearly not every boss is tauntable, but enough are that it is a meaningful glyph, trash is just a bonus.

I will be using SoV on almost everything, SoR got nerfed rather fierce. Also, stacking SoV on multiple mobs, both with HotR and tabbing, allows an even distribution of threat on an aoe pull. Having a high threat dot ticking is a nice addition to consecrate.

I can see Blood being the top OT seal, but I'd rather use the glyph of Spiritual Attunement than the Blood one.

On another note, this may be the final nail in coffin for spell power weapons. From GC:

This also makes our 2 pc set bonus look better.

 

Denogran

Ya I guess that makes sense. I certainly wasn't an amazingly geared tank (well, anything) coming into TBC, so I don't remember that as much. It's sorta disappointing that outside of threat, I'll be a worse tank at 80 against Sunwell bosses than I am at 70 against the same bosses (due to the diminishing value of ratings). Guess that's how gear resets go though.

Although, looking at that a bit more, a 3-4k increase on 10k would correspond to a 7-9k increase on 25k. They've said they're not increasing the stamina nearly as drastically as they did for TBC, but little stamina and an avoidance decrease means we're really not gaining a lot over the next 10 levels.

Except threat. Although the more I think about the changes to threat, the more concerned I am about tanking. What separates a good tank from a bad tank now is the ability to generate threat while keeping yourself as intact as possible. Changing your gear to match the fight, optimizing your button sequences (granted not the hardest thing on a paladin), some positioning, hitting your emergency buttons when appropriate. If threat is no longer a real issues, a lot of the interesting part of tanking will disappear. Ya, we get more buttons to press. But if the order in which we press those buttons doesn't matter as much, or if missing one here or there doesn't matter, doesn't tanking get a lot more dull?

 

Halion

I think threat being made easier opens the door for more people to try tanking.

I know when I was a healer, I had a small friends list of tanks I was willing to run instances with, it simply wasn't worth the pain / time of wiping with that "newb" tank as he figured out how to do his job.

Top progression guilds are still going to require top notch tanks, and depending on how Blizzard balances threat scaling, we may be pushed to our limits again in T8 or T9. Honestly, I never had any threat issues in Kara or other T4 instances. Once dps was fully geared, threat became a much bigger concern. Perhaps even with our dps / threat scaling better this expansion, the gap will close as gear levels increase.

 

Tilted

That very thought crossed my mind, but the more I think about it the less I'm concerned. Good players always find a way to stand out. There's no percentage they can put on a talent or spell that teaches bad players how to properly LoS pull, or how to position a pack of mobs composed of varying types (melee, ranged, caster) such that your AoE can quickly dispatch them. Now that they're adding emergency buttons for all tanks, it allows us to focus more on survival rather than the threat meter, hoping that the next Shadow Bolt or whatever doesn't crit. While it's true that threat generation as a whole will be less of an "art" than it is today, I think it's safe to say most of us have had to try way too damn hard to hold onto aggro the past few months and a shift in the other direction is probably welcome.

 

Denogran

Ya, I mean this isn't even so much about me standing out, it's about me being bored. I'll give an example of my favorite fight to tank so far - M'uru. Solo-tanking the Sentinels and the voids is the most interesting tanking job I've had. Not only do I have to worry about threat in a serious way, but I also have to worry about survival (they hit like beasts), and then on top of that positioning and spatial awareness are a big issue. Is the job tough as hell? Certainly, and I definitely appreciate the desire by Blizzard to introduce more people into the rarefied group that is tanking( My guild has 4 tanks right now - compared to ~30 dps and 15 healers ). But it's damn interesting, and a lot of fun to play. Now take away threat, and you have the Flames of Azzinoth. Fun, but not nearly as compelling (Also, eyebeams can burn in hell....). Take away threat and position and you're left with spawn tank on M'uru, a job that's stupidly boring.

Also, I'd consider generating threat to be the most active part of a tank's life. Keeping yourself alive is mostly just remembering to hit holy shield and ironshields on cooldown (judging if you have mother's trinket), and knowing when to pop a healthpot or trinket. Moving makes things more interesting, but if the only thing you're really concerned with is keeping holy shield up while you're doing it, because as long as you're halfways good at the threat moves you'll be alright, well that drops the entertainment down quite a bit.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like to feel like I can't generate enough threat. But I think fights where the dps is extremely close behind are the most interesting, and where I have to time cooldowns and pots in order to just stay ahead are faaaar more interesting (see: Brutallus, RoS). Sure, I love rolling through Deadmines or Heroic Shattered Halls every once in a while and consecrating the place to oblivion. But for interesting raid tanking? Gets dull rather quickly.

 

◊ Oggie

I love that you equated HSH with Deadmines.

Not that you're wrong, and I agree with it. I love the TPS minigame and I hope they don't box it out completely, but I'm pretty okay with them doing away with it for 5mans/some easier 10mans- sure, it'll be harder to tell if someone's a good tank, but on the other hand it'll matter a lot less.

Edit:
Oh and it bears repeating, thank GOD ironshields are going bye-bye.

 

PsiVen

Food for thought: The Nesingwary 4000 is 42 stam + 6 socket bonus +24 blue gem = 72 stam, or 792 HP with Kings.
With warriors at 0% scaling and paladins at 12%, the raidbuffed stamina break-even point with this weapon is 1847 stamina (25404 HP). This is around the mark of blues. Quite plausible that if warriors will have the best mitigation that that may end up with the worst health pool.

 

Kaylee

I'd be happy with that. The health difference doesn't matter to me anymore. I don't want equal base health and scaling to a warrior. What we should be asking for is equal (or as close as possible) effective health. If paladins have higher health, but warriors have slightly higher mitigation... that's an interesting way for it to even out. If we get to tier 9 content and the scaling means that paladins are pulling way ahead too far, Blizzard can drop in a new ranged weapon for warriors with higher stamina, or they could put slightly less stamina on the paladin tier sets.

Stamina scaling doesn't have to mean we become monsters later on, because raiding paladin and warrior tanks (and death knights) probably won't all be wearing the exact same gear.

 

Alliera

Warriors have 6% scaling, though. Assuming the delta is (42 + 6 + 24)x11 + 1187 = 1979, the break-even point is 2829 stamina.

1.06 x 1.06 x 1.1 x stamina = delta_health + 1.06 x 1.1 x stamina => .06996 x stamina = delta_health

What we get out of this is obviously health from stamina, so simply divide the final number by 10 to get the stamina equalization point -- or instead of dividing by .06996, divide by .6996.

That means the equalization point is roughly delta_health x 1.43.

 

jere

Well, it is actually a bit higher than that. I don't have time to go through all the details at this point (going to an all day class at work), so I will quote a post I made on another thread working out the math:

The crossover point happens when we hit around 50k raid buffed HP (kings, CS/BP, 650 health flask, fort, MotW, etc) which comes out to be around 4032 character sheet stamina, which is 3120 stamina from gear and buffs and of course our base stamina of 143 (for human).

Run the equations:
Paladin HP = 6934 + 1.06*1.06*1.1*10*(143 + s) - 180 + 2255 + 650
Warrior HP = 8121 + 1.06*1.1*10*(159 + 78 + s) - 180 + 2255 + 650

Note that you can replace the 78 with a 72 since you are using a blue gem (I used an epic) and you can swap the base stamina values for whatever race you prefer (I used human in both). Set them equal and solve for s, which is the stamina from gear and buffs before talents and BoK kick in.

 

◊ Oggie

I think there's a miscommunication going on Jere- the newest version of the beta talents on the official calculator has Vitality not doing anything for Stam for warriors: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator

I'm reasonably sure that warriors currently on beta do not have this version, and it's certainly not from the MMO talents.

Edit:
Okay, no idea what the state these talents are in. Warriors have two improved TC taletns, the prot pally tree is basically from 3-4 patches ago, this is just a huge mishmash.

 

bellator

Multi hit AS isn't needed for control, i just find it a little easier. Going through naxx, it's just a little easier if you have a pack of 5 for ensuring all adds stick to you. Can open with this, judge/exo whoever wasnt his, then with HotR/cons, dps can attack whatever they like.

Yes I am a paladin, however this isnt the big difference. I am using the two insane JC stamina trinkets, with 3 +41stam gems. I also have most enchants as stamina. My gear however isnt that great. I only have 1 item from 10-mans(gloves) and 1 item (belt) from badges. When tier 8 comes, I think hitting 40k won't be much of a problem

I do really have 35k fully buffed, not lieing :p. As to how it feels, its a little tricky to say as i feel 10-man naxx is currently horribly tuned in terms of consistency (wont go into it here too much though). As you know the maximum damage throughput a tank can take can be no more than the maximum healing throughput the healers can do. With the mana issues etc coming with wrath the later isnt massive. What this means is that:-

1) On fights like patchwerk, maexanna, where the tanks are taking the majority of raid damage, having the high stamina helps with non-avoided string of hatefuls or a poorly executed web wrab etc.
2) On fights like 4HM where a healer has to heal a tank+marks+meteor it means the tank is only taking 2.5k damage per 2 sec in melee hits and 4k meteors every 10 seconds, then the HP is ridiculous, and you could tank it with 20khp.

Thus, personally, i would say it ranges from ok to too much. Personally i think around 30k would be more suitable, but then work needs to be done to tune up healers mana a little and in turn tune up damage output of fights like 4HM to create some consisteny accross the instance.

 

Mortehl

I believe you! I feel pretty good putting up a 25k pool right now with 3 crafted blues, a belt, both rings, and a trinket leftover from level 70 content (incidentally the trinket I'm using is the scarab as it had more raw defense then the shadowmoon insignia, though I have access to both). All in all, I am pretty sure I could ping 30k right now by replacing the level 70 crap.

I think we're both right on the Avenger's Shield thing. It comes down to style and I'm not going to knock yours.

 

Denogran

I ran them both this last weekend and the only real difference is that Deadmines doesn't require a healer. Going to be ridiculous with the changes to Blessing of Sanctuary though, right now the biggest downtime in either instance is the requirement to drink every so often.

I only really minded ironshields for two reasons. One was that ancient lichen was such a pain in the ass to farm. Basically, you could only get the stuff from dungeons or the trees in Skettis. And second, they only stack in 5s. I never have _any_ room in my bags (although carrying 3 sets of gear, 12 weapons and 4 shields certainly isn't helping my cause). If they had made Ironshield injectors with more readily available herbs, I wouldn't have minded them in the slightest (and would probably be far better about popping them on cooldown than I am now).

One last word on the TPS stuff. I don't mind tanks being threat gods for 5-man stuff. The more available tanks there the better, and if it's enough where I feel comfortable bringing my woefully undergeared fury warrior as a temporary prot tank and am not left with a feeling of complete ineptness, then awesome. But I do believe that raiding (whether 10-man or 25-man), should leave threat as a concern - for both the tanks and the dps.

Also, I'm glad to hear that health actually increases by a substantial amount. Gotta say it just makes me feel happy seeing the huge amounts of health I currently have - going up in life is a lot more rewarding than going up in say avoidance, even if the end results are very similar.

 

◊ Cathela

Right, but the flip side to that is that on those uncommon bosses that can be taunted, it's usually Really Fucking Important not to get a resist. Missing a taunt on Kalecgos means sitting around for 10 seconds (after 3.0 reduces RD cooldown), hoping that the tank you're relieving doesn't miss his portal, or worse yet die due to another stack of the debuff. Missing a taunt on Brutallus means basically saying "sorry guys, GG RNG, just die where you are so we can use our skeletons to position quickly for the next attempt."

Granted, these situations would be less critical if we had a viable backup taunt mechanic like Challenging Shout or a glyphed Mocking Blow, and hopefully that's a flaw that will be addressed somehow (our nebulous 11-point talent?) but for now, we've only got the one taunt, and in situations where it needs to hit, it really needs to hit.

The value of the RD glyph is going to come down to:

(1) Does RD use the base physical miss rate (9% on bosses) or the spell miss rate (17% on bosses)? If it's the physical miss rate, then you can eliminate taunt resists just by hit-capping, which will be good for your threat anyway, so the glyph will only be useful if you're not hit-capped for whatever reason. If it's the spell miss rate, then you need the glyph and physical hit-cap to remove taunt resists -- and you'll definitely want the glyph for that because otherwise you'd have to stack a bunch of extra hit rating beyond what you need for threat reasoons.

(2) How much hit rating do we get on our gear? If there's copious hit rating just hanging around randomly on tanking gear, then hit-capping might happen more or less "automatically" as you gear up. On the other hand, if it's not so abundant then it may require an effort to specifically seek out pieces with +hit on them to hit-cap, and you'll have to weigh the value of that against the other benefits you could gain. Potentially this could involve a lot of tradeoffs and a lot of thinking to do (which is good!)

Well, you're right, giving everyone a crapton of threat makes that less of a skill factor. But we're not going to be re-doing BC content with the new mechanics, and if the content developers are smart they'll take advantage of the fact that threat is less of a concern and use that as a reason to add more difficulty (and different kinds of difficulty) to WotLK tanking roles. Two years ago one could have said that adding a ranged taunt to the game basically trivialized Sartura, which was a fun tanking encounter. And that's true, but it hasn't stopped the devs coming up with new encounters that were fun to tank for different reasons.

Don't get me wrong, I actually agree with you that it's kind of sad to see threat-generation reduced in importance as a way to show skill. But there will (hopefully) be other challenges to replace it.

And I think there's also something to be said for just changing the game around a bit for the sake of change itself; it's nice that the next two years of tanking will be different from the last two years, even if TBC tanking was a lot of fun.

Yes. I really found it frustrating that we had to carry around stacks and stacks of consumables to pop every two minutes just to reach our steady full potential as tanks. I don't know that I like the new potion sickness exactly as it is right now (getting one pot per fight regardless of its length seems a little weird to me; if an encounter is going to last 20-30 minutes you'd think you could pot twice) but it's a lot better than the current situation on live.

MMO-Champ's calculator is usually more up to date than the official one; right now it's allegedly showing the changes from the incoming patch, and it shows +6% stam from vitality. I don't remember if I said this in this thread or the other one, but trying to balance a static health gap against a scaling difference is just a bad idea, because it guarantees an imbalance somewhere. Much better I think if they change one of our +6% stam talents to instead give a percentage buff to base health, and then we can have warriors and paladins scale up together all the way through the gear progression. (And it's fine if we have different health pools as long as it's balanced by mitigation differences or whatever, but it should be balanced all the way through the gear progression, not "You're 1000 hp low right now, but by the time you kill Arthas you'll be 1000 hp high, so it's balanced!")

I can see the argument that instead of AS'ing a melee pack you can just stand in their way as they come in and hammer the group when one gets into range.

What I would miss most about multi-target AS is being able to get opening threat on three caster mobs. This is useful if you're CC'ing them, because if the CC pops early they're aggro'd on you rather than on the mage/priest/whatever. It's also nice of you're not CC'ing, because the AS threat is often enough to stay ahead of healing threat for a long time, so you can effectively "offtank" a ranged caster for awhile even while you're doing something else, as long as nobody else touches it.

Still, every time I toss out an instant-cast AS and get a 3.4k crit without the glyph, I start salivating thinking about what kind of damage it would do with the glyph.

Interesting notes on the stamina (from both of you). Glad to see that we do get some kind of stam boost at 80; I guess a lot of the question of how much stam is "enough" will depend on where Naxx ends up after tuning. And if it turns out that 35-40khp really us useful, Jewelcrafting looks like a pretty sweet profession.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Halion

I've just assumed that it is using spell miss, the taunt glyphs all being 8% is just too much of a coincidence for any other explanation.

Has anyone tested this on PTR?

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

I believe it has been tested on live and found to be on the spell hit table, and I think it is unlikely to have been changed in 3.0. And yeah, it doesn't make any sense for the glyph to be +8% otherwise; that works out to exactly the 17% you need to never, ever miss if you gear for the 9% physical hit cap.