Too many Warrior Tanks? Maybe require more tanks!
Posted 06-25-2009 at 10:05 AM by Wütend
"Blizzard has ruined everything forever!"
With Ghostcrawler's semi-recent blue post about how 'yes, Warrior Tanks are probably the worst Ulduar tanks, no we're not going to buff them because we don't want more Warrior Tanks', there has of course been a lot of QQ. Lord knows I logged in and started complaining to my guild, something in hindsight I'm not proud of (but there you have it).
I think a lot of the discussion has talked a lot about why Warriors deserve changes, but not much about how we could compromise with Blizzard. Granted, it seems like we've been put into an impossible position!
GC has more or less told us (or at least, how I understand it) that they don't want to buff Warriors, because they want to disuade people from thinking that Warriors are "the tank" to bring to an instance. According to his numbers, Warriors still are the "#1" tank by a healthy margin, such a margin that buffing them would potentially just cause more people to roll Warriors! Obviously, not a position that allows much bargaining.
I liken it somewhat to affirmative action; you encourage hiring practices that target underrepresented groups. Of course, no Warrior is going to say "I think Warriors should be the best tanks" but a lot I would wager, would want to think that if they were the better player, that they should be the one tanking.
(Side note: I don't want to turn this into a debate about real life affirmative action policies, just thought there was a similar argument.)
Where are my Druids at?
Now, the data suggests that there is not some overwhelming amount of Warriors flooding the servers. Looking at the numbers at WarcraftRealms the totals suggests that (counting level 80 players, Horde only) Warriors make up about 9% of the population. The other tanking classes outnumber Warriors on average (Death Knights are roughly 16%, Druids are 10%, Paladins 13%). Granted, we have to make two assumptions here:
1) There are roughly an equal percentage of classes that raid, versus classes that don't raid (i.e. that 9% of raiders are warriors). This is likely untrue; there are likely, for example, more non-raiding DKS and Paladins than there are ones that raid.
2) That there is a roughly equal distribution of "specs." What I mean here is that 33% of Warriors are Arms Warriors, 33% are Fury, and 33% are Prot. These numbers are probably off, but we need to account, for example, for Paladins that are Holy or Ret, and would therefore not be tanking.
At the very least, w can see from the numbers that there isn't some overwhelming number of Warriors out there. The other tanking classes do exist, even if (in the case of Druids and Paladins) they might be healing instead (but on the same page, Warriors might be DPSing too!).
If most raid tanks in Ulduar are Warriors, based on this assumptions there must be some surplus of non-warrior tanks who AREN'T tanking that Blizzard wants to fix.
M-Moar?
Blizzard is taking the solution that, over time, guilds will choose Druids, DKs, and Paladins over Warriors simply because they're "slightly better." I don't think their intention is to kick out those stalwart Warriors who have been MTing for their guild for years. However, they want to discourage NEW warrior tanks. I think that they should instead be focusing their efforts into allowing more opportunities to tank.
Right now, guilds doing a 25 man raids require 3 tanks at most. Most fights require two. Some fights don't even require more than one! If the problem is that Guilds are taking two tanks into a raid, and one of those is a warrior (instead of a different class) then perhaps the solution is not to replace the class but to create fights where three tanks become the minimum (with occasionally needing 4), rather than the exception. The Warriors who have always been tanking get to stay, and the guild (now needing two more tanks) invites some fresh tanking blood in, probably aiming for a different class such as to have some variety.
Now, someone commented about this suggestion that they have a hard enough time getting two tanks for a 10-man raid. I think this is a fair comment. Two tanks for every 10 people seems fair; the problem is when you're balancing around 2 tanks for 25 people. This is not going to be solved by buffing classes. That is a problem with encouraging people to tank, one aspect of which is a problem with not giving people an incentive to (i.e. by opening up more positions).
However, we know there are all these Paladins, Druids, and Death Knights out there that could tank but choose not to. I think upping the number of tanks needed to raid successfully would create a shortage that would encourage these classes to start building a tank set. After all, it only takes a few weeks of "can't raid, not enough tanks" before the guild Moonkin sees the benefit of bringing a Feral set. Dual Specs already make this easier than ever.
Anyway, just what I was thinking. Comments? Ideas? Flames?
- Wütend
With Ghostcrawler's semi-recent blue post about how 'yes, Warrior Tanks are probably the worst Ulduar tanks, no we're not going to buff them because we don't want more Warrior Tanks', there has of course been a lot of QQ. Lord knows I logged in and started complaining to my guild, something in hindsight I'm not proud of (but there you have it).
I think a lot of the discussion has talked a lot about why Warriors deserve changes, but not much about how we could compromise with Blizzard. Granted, it seems like we've been put into an impossible position!
GC has more or less told us (or at least, how I understand it) that they don't want to buff Warriors, because they want to disuade people from thinking that Warriors are "the tank" to bring to an instance. According to his numbers, Warriors still are the "#1" tank by a healthy margin, such a margin that buffing them would potentially just cause more people to roll Warriors! Obviously, not a position that allows much bargaining.
I liken it somewhat to affirmative action; you encourage hiring practices that target underrepresented groups. Of course, no Warrior is going to say "I think Warriors should be the best tanks" but a lot I would wager, would want to think that if they were the better player, that they should be the one tanking.
(Side note: I don't want to turn this into a debate about real life affirmative action policies, just thought there was a similar argument.)
Where are my Druids at?
Now, the data suggests that there is not some overwhelming amount of Warriors flooding the servers. Looking at the numbers at WarcraftRealms the totals suggests that (counting level 80 players, Horde only) Warriors make up about 9% of the population. The other tanking classes outnumber Warriors on average (Death Knights are roughly 16%, Druids are 10%, Paladins 13%). Granted, we have to make two assumptions here:
1) There are roughly an equal percentage of classes that raid, versus classes that don't raid (i.e. that 9% of raiders are warriors). This is likely untrue; there are likely, for example, more non-raiding DKS and Paladins than there are ones that raid.
2) That there is a roughly equal distribution of "specs." What I mean here is that 33% of Warriors are Arms Warriors, 33% are Fury, and 33% are Prot. These numbers are probably off, but we need to account, for example, for Paladins that are Holy or Ret, and would therefore not be tanking.
At the very least, w can see from the numbers that there isn't some overwhelming number of Warriors out there. The other tanking classes do exist, even if (in the case of Druids and Paladins) they might be healing instead (but on the same page, Warriors might be DPSing too!).
If most raid tanks in Ulduar are Warriors, based on this assumptions there must be some surplus of non-warrior tanks who AREN'T tanking that Blizzard wants to fix.
M-Moar?
Blizzard is taking the solution that, over time, guilds will choose Druids, DKs, and Paladins over Warriors simply because they're "slightly better." I don't think their intention is to kick out those stalwart Warriors who have been MTing for their guild for years. However, they want to discourage NEW warrior tanks. I think that they should instead be focusing their efforts into allowing more opportunities to tank.
Right now, guilds doing a 25 man raids require 3 tanks at most. Most fights require two. Some fights don't even require more than one! If the problem is that Guilds are taking two tanks into a raid, and one of those is a warrior (instead of a different class) then perhaps the solution is not to replace the class but to create fights where three tanks become the minimum (with occasionally needing 4), rather than the exception. The Warriors who have always been tanking get to stay, and the guild (now needing two more tanks) invites some fresh tanking blood in, probably aiming for a different class such as to have some variety.
Now, someone commented about this suggestion that they have a hard enough time getting two tanks for a 10-man raid. I think this is a fair comment. Two tanks for every 10 people seems fair; the problem is when you're balancing around 2 tanks for 25 people. This is not going to be solved by buffing classes. That is a problem with encouraging people to tank, one aspect of which is a problem with not giving people an incentive to (i.e. by opening up more positions).
However, we know there are all these Paladins, Druids, and Death Knights out there that could tank but choose not to. I think upping the number of tanks needed to raid successfully would create a shortage that would encourage these classes to start building a tank set. After all, it only takes a few weeks of "can't raid, not enough tanks" before the guild Moonkin sees the benefit of bringing a Feral set. Dual Specs already make this easier than ever.
Anyway, just what I was thinking. Comments? Ideas? Flames?
- Wütend
Total Comments 14
Comments
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GCs comments are overly simplistic and IMO, more to do with marketing than game design. You could easily make the exact same comment based on race saying that "there are too many humans and not enough dwarves". I play my warrior because I enjoy the challenge and because I've been playing him since Vanilla wow. This idea that warriors need to be "handicapped" like in a horse race so that other tanking become better represented is crap. All I ask is for a reasonable degree of equity and then let individual skill tell the rest of the story.
What happenned to "Bring the player not the toon"? Cause the way things are balanced right now, I belive Blizzard is sending the exact opposite message.Posted 06-25-2009 at 11:00 AM by Meythos 
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I think the problem is that the most skilled tanks have been around for a while and thus are mostly warriors or pallys. there are plenty of dk tanks but from what i have seen most suck, there are some amazing ones but they are the exception. druids I have seen less and less of, and the few i have seen were terrible, moron players so dont know how good the class is roflPosted 06-25-2009 at 11:06 AM by Swam - I understand what you two are saying (well, except the whole "I haven't seen a good Druid lol" comment), but you two are saying nothing new, and where is that getting us?
I think we can all agree that there is nothing wrong with seeing an equal distribution of the four tank-able classes sharing the spotlight in the game. We just disagree with how we should get there.
Blizzard does not want the problem that BC had, with lots lots of Warrior Tanks preventing Druids and Paladin from trying their hand at holding aggro. I think this is a very fair goal; you shouldn't think "warrior" when you think "tank." Yet, that's how the perception was. People were "bringing the class, not the player."
Warriors have no upsurped this into believing that the current 3.2 changes are making them obsolete. I think we can agree this is far from the case, Warriors will always be around, particularly in the places where they have been "the guild tanks." The problem is that these guilds are bringing the player AND the class!
It's conflicting design; You cannot encourage multiple classes that they can tank 'too' and then not give them the opportunity too.
Compare it to healers. There are four classes (Druid, Priest, Paladin, Shaman) that can heal. Imagine if on a 25 man raid, you only needed two healers (Ignore the capabilities and limits of each healer class for the moment). Now imagine that 60% of established healers were Priests!
You end up dividing the remaining 40% against three other classes. Perhaps some raids have a Priest and a Druid, others a Priest and a Paladin, and maybe the odd Priest and Shaman, but the problem is you don't see a Druid and a Shaman, or two Paladins. There's simply less space to allow these combinations, since under these scenarios having a 3rd healer is redundant.
But 25 mans don't require 2 healers, they require 5 or 6. Raids end up having the space to mix up their healers more. Sure, they might all have a Priest, but their other three ends up a mix of the rest, since
a) there is the demand for them and
b) they appear in roughly equal numbers and
c) they're not encouraging people to choose one class over another.
A solution then, to keep both sides happy, is to create an environment where all these DKs, Pallys and Bears are needed to raid. That allows you to keep the classes equalized while increasing representation.
- WütendPosted 06-25-2009 at 12:06 PM by Wütend - You thought "warrior" when you thought "tank" because of old mechanics, ie: crushing blows. A lot of the best tanks in the game are warriors. Is this because the class is overpowered? Far from it. It's just that the MT position in vanilla was always a warrior, and pretty much through BC as well. So for those high end guilds that still exist, their MT is still a warrior, not due to the class, but due to the player. The sad part is that I know a few MT warriors from guilds like that that had to step aside and let the DK or druid tank in their place solely based on the limitations of the warrior as a class.
Posted 06-25-2009 at 04:41 PM by Rampart - You completely botched GC's quote... He never said they weren't buffing Warriors because there are a lot of warrior tanks and then want other classes to get more exposure. He stated that because there were more warrior tanks, and given the previous views on tanking in general from previous expansions, they have to be more careful with the changes they make. That means taking a longer look at things and making sure they don't go overboard with something. It also probably means they're more cautious and if they feel something could possibly OP down the line they're more likely to hold off on it till they get some more data.
As for the more tanks idea, GC has already explained why thats a bad idea. The problem is that there aren't very many ways to actually get multiple tanks into an encounter, so it'd all end up running together. There are about 3 mechanics total that can be used to prop up the tank count in an encounter, more mobs, debuffs, and cleaves/Hateful's that have to be eaten by more than one tank. The cleave one is the most boring, as the other tanks just stand there and get smoked the entire encounter. The other two would get really old, really quick if every single encounter had to be designed around either 4 tanks switching aggro, or multiple mobs all the time.Posted 06-25-2009 at 04:47 PM by Aldragoriad 
- I understand that they're trying to reduce a surplus of a class...but what about the other surplus classes that keep getting buffed I.E. Hunters and Dks. Any Ideas?
Posted 06-25-2009 at 08:36 PM by Gillbertwarrior - GC's original quote (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=3):
"There are A LOT of warrior tanks. They are tanking every fight in Ulduar. If warriors were too low and if we buffed them, I don’t see how that would increase the numbers on the other tanks. I don’t think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors are overpowered. I think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors were the traditional tank and lot of established guilds have established MTs who see no reason to reroll the FotM. It’s not actually a goal to have 25% of each tank in Ulduar, but is also seems strange to buff the most popular tank. Won’t that just make them more popular?"
The way I read it he EXACTLY said they weren't buffing Warriors because there are a lot of warrior tanks and then want other classes to get more exposure.
And hey, I understand that making a raid encounter work with four tanks is tricky. But you know, they use more mobs, debuffs, and raid damage in multiple, interesting ways as it is, using mechanics we've seen before. To claim it's impossible to do when requiring 4 tanks seems like a cop out.
-WütendPosted 06-25-2009 at 08:47 PM by Wütend - Or just design fights where you need one of each type of tank to be optimal rather then keep designing fights where only the DK or Druid could possibly survive without being carried by other people's cooldowns.
But you know, that's logical.Posted 06-25-2009 at 08:58 PM by Durandro - You're using a terrible quote to prop up your argument. Its badly worded, ambiguous, and hard to understand. On top of that its talking about more than you're reading about, which you only get if you look at the entirety of his posts about the matter.
Yes I'm sure one of the things they think about is exactly what you're talking about, but its nowhere near the entirety of philosophy. It goes more back to what I was trying to explain in my last post. They want to be careful about what they do with warriors so they don't reinforce the stereotype of warriors being the only tank.
I also like how you stripped away the disclaimers which prove my point.
You also completely misunderstood my point about multiple tanks. There are 3 mechanics that work for making an encounter a multiple tank fight. If every fight has those mechanics it limits the other mechanics you can use with them. You can't have the same amount of say raid damage for example as say mimiron if you have to worry about keeping 4 tanks up at the same time because of cleave mechanics, or multiple mobs.Posted 06-25-2009 at 11:51 PM by Aldragoriad - With dual specs, you don't need every fight to be 3-4 tanks. Just enough of them in each instance so that actually bringing along that many tank capable people is of value.
Yes, a small number of bleeding edge guilds might chose to swap between a straight DPS person and a straight tank person from fight to fight. On the other hand, most guilds will just say "Sorry, but you will need to buy dual spec and carry a set of DPS or Healing gear with you".Posted 06-26-2009 at 07:33 AM by Zyffyr - (I don't know which disclaimers I striped away that you, Aldragoriad, disagree with, but please post them. It wasn't my intention)
I want to be clear that my post was less about buffing warriors as it was about getting other classes into the raids to tank.
Now, don't get me wrong. I think requiring more tanks to raid is a way that allows them to be more bold with their changes, while simultaneously increasing the number of DK, Druid, and Paladin tanks without increasing the number of Warrior Tanks to a large degree.
I think you're talking more about the last two points GC made here, which echoes a lot of what he said from his first post, but adds your concern about the "stereotype," which I think your comments address, and I think your comments are very fair.
It would be awesome to kill the stereotype that Warriors are "the only tank." However, I believe reaching that goal has thus far, proven to be flawed. It's been over two years since the Burning Crusade was introduced, and we're still not the rough parity that GC/Blizzard would be happy with.
Now I don't know the numbers, but if we've still got all these Vanilla Prot Warriors running around AND a player base that still doesn't seem to "get" that Warriors are a tanking class, not THE tanking class, then being "careful" sounds like it will be a LONG time before they start making the bold strokes needed to fix the class, let alone buff us the the point where we're "as good," not "slightly worse" than the other tanks that no one apparently wants to play as.
In my eyes, that is completely unacceptable. If you can't change the stereotype, change the raid.
And sorry, I think you misunderstood my comments about "the 3 mechanics."
Many of the current boss fights are simply taking boss mechanics that worked before and presenting them in a "fresh" way.
In Naxx for example, you had some bosses that we're all about handing adds (Gothik, Gluth), some that were about debuffs (4 Horsemen, Thaddius) and some that were about handling raid damage (Loatheb, Sapphiron). I would add a fourth category too, about raid movement (Heigan, Grobbulus). These all came together with the final boss of Naxx, KT, as you all of a sudden were combining a lot of these into a single fight.
Ulduar bosses are riffing off a lot of mechanics that we've seen before. Razorscale has multiple mobs to handle, much like Noth. XT-002 uses a mechanic similar to Grobbulus (along with mob management), Mimiron requires a lot of raid movement, etc.
My point is that the mechanics themselves are not new; they're simply presented differently.
Sure, some of the ones they've used in the past for tanks do not have a lot of design space (the "Cleave" one comes to mind...), and yes, a fight that requires 4 tanks couldn't have much raid-wide damage being pumped out (I would save it for the fights that only require 2 or 3 tanks).
But my point is that designing them is not impossible. While it may be harder, if Blizzard dug deep enough the could do it. Heck, maybe there's a fourth mechanic they could use that they simply haven't thought of. Are they trying to design fights that require 4 tanks privately? Maybe, but everything that is going on the PTR seems to indicate more and more two-tank fights, which, pardon my skepticism (it seems they're bringing the cleave mechanic back to the new VoA boss QQ), seems to indicate that they're not trying.
- WütendPosted 06-26-2009 at 08:06 AM by Wütend - "Again, don’t misinterpret that as GC sez suck it up warriors. It is something we have to keep in mind, however. "
Right there, at the end of the same paragraph you were quoting. He flat out says don't take that as a completely serious and overriding point, but something they have to think about as part of a larger scheme. The fact that you ignore it means you're ignoring half of what he was saying in that point.
Actually using the release of BC as a starting point for parity of tanks is flawed. GC has stated already that while in BC tank parity was better, Warriors were still designed to be the best and in many cases only tank for an encounter. Druids and Pallys could tank a lot too, but it wasn't a design goal for them to be even until they released Wrath and 3.0. Thats a lot smaller timeframe, and only 2, or 3 if you include 3.2 on the PTR, patches, which means that there hasn't actually been much time passing for their design changes to effect the thinking of the population as a whole.
Theres also the fact that you're still looking at this as if they're deliberately gimping warriors to break the stereotype, which is not at all what he said. Which was that while the stereotype existed, they were more cautious about what they did with the warrior class because they didn't want it to rear its ugly head again, and force all the other tanks back into the background. Thats something that will probably be around for at least another expansion, if not longer, because they aren't moving draconianly to curb it, rather being careful to make sure that they don't reinforce it. Its a subtle concept that you seem to be missing.
You still aren't understanding my point about multi-tank encounters, although I understand yours. Lets look at the few fights in Naxx that really require multiple(3+) tanks, you've got patch, gluth, 4h, and KT. All 4 of those fights are actually really simple, and in fact quite boring to be honest.
Patches is a simple tank and spank where the "challenge" is keeping your tanks alive through heavy damage. No movement, no raid damage, no interesting mechanics, just straight up tank damage. Its pretty much the cleave fight from BC.
Gluth is your basic many adds fight, again not really much to it. Yeah they added in some flavor with the decimate, but again, thats really only a concern for the tanks, as nobody else is getting hit at that point, and its not even fatal or dangerous to anyone by itself. Gluth does combine a few elements of other fights, but really theres a lot that can't be done simply because you have 3-4 tanks that have to be watched at all times in various areas, which just limits how much you can actually do.
4h is a debuff fight, although its also got elements of a multi-mob fight too. The whole encounter is about managing the debuff, there really isn't anything else in it, you get X number of debuffs, and your tanks switch, rather a dull and boring fight on the level of Patches, but again theres not a lot of ways to spice it up, because you have all these tanks, that need healers, and they're far apart.
KT is a little more exciting, and combined a few of the mechanics from the other 3, but really, none of the mechanics in naxx come anywhere close to the design and challenges of Uld.
Uld on the other hand has a much bigger variety of mechanics that came into play, a lot of which wouldn't work worth a crap if you had to support pulling healer attention away with more tanks. Mimi with 4 tanks? Yeah right, and its one of the more interesting encounters. Trying to stress mana the way they do in General Vezax with multiple tanks? Again, not really possible, too much stuff would be happening to have that kind of mechanic going on, which is patently obvious if you have terrible ranged DPS who fail at avoiding shadow crash. Hell you can't even have a "threat" fight like Hodir with 4 tanks, really. See how many choices thats already taken off the table for design?
That hasn't even gotten into what it might do to healing design and balance if there were a ton of multi-tank fights just to make sure that every tank got a chance. Blizz has said yes, it would be possible to use a 4 tank model, but they haven't because A) it would make the fights run together a lot more, and quash much of the variety in an instance, and B) that the design limitations it puts on things would be harmful to the game in general, and they don't feel that there are anywhere near enough benefits to outweigh the negatives associated with designing that way. So no they aren't trying, because they decided it would be a terrible direction to in.Posted 06-26-2009 at 01:15 PM by Aldragoriad - I'm really glad you're commenting on this Aldragoriad, because you're bringing a more lot of good counter-points to my argument
I don't think there's any point in continuing the "need to be careful about buffing warriors argument." While I do think the end result of Blizzard's policy is that we're going to see Warriors continue to languish as a tanking class, you make some really good points about how we all have to be careful not to blow GCs comments out of proportion, something I am guilty of. But saying "you're the worst Ulduar tank. Here's next to zero changes" is still a kick in the pants.
Still, I concede this point to you. I'd rather talk about adding more tanks to fights.
I agree that the multi-tank fights in Naxx are boring, but I would argue it is because the instance is designed with the idea that you bring two tanks in. I would disagree that the 4 Horseman fight is boring, but yes, it's not the tanking that makes it interesting.
I want to say I disagree that you can't have interesting fights like Mimiron or General Vezax; the problem I think is that you're making the assumption that because those fights are interesting, and you can't make them work with four tanks, that you can't have them at all.
You can still have interesting fights like this; Dual spec makes it really easy to say "Okay, we only need two tanks for this fight." The problem is when you ALWAYS need only two tanks for a fight.
Imagine if for Kologarn you had to DPS both Arms down before switching to the main body, with resulting rubble. That would be an easy fight to add a fourth tank to, and I don't think it would make it a "less interesting" fight.
What if adds continued to spawn as your other two tanks dragged Razorscale around the room after he landed, using that as a soft enrage timer?
What if the Main Tank could be hit by Gravity/Light Bombs on Xt-002?
These are all simple measures that could have been done to keep the existing encounters interesting, all while adding at least one more tank. Our guild is still working on Mimiron, so I can't confidently comment on anything past him. Sure, if implemented today they would require tweaking (some more than others) but the point is that those changes wouldn't devastate the core fights, yet would add one more tank, which in think would encourage more non-warrior tanks into the raids.
And the best part, when you get to your one or two tank fights, your other tanks could switch to DPS thanks to dual specs, allowing the designers to create the interesting encounters that you've named that still exist.
Would a four-tank model (something I fully admit I am incapable of creating) be difficult to make interesting? Sure, there is a lot of issues that would need to be sorted through. And hey, a lot of players enjoy the two tank model, and I don't fault them with it.
We both agree that "careful" changes to warriors is not going to solve the problem of tank parity in the near future, but of what solace is that to Prot Warriors when they see the other tanks get huge swings of buffs/nerfs, while we get small changes sloooooowly overtime? I'm sorry, it makes me sound like a second class... er, class.
So I say, let's speed the process up. While I would prefer four, even making three tanks the "minimum" you bring to a raid would be a huge leap forward for tank parity.
- WütendPosted 06-26-2009 at 02:50 PM by Wütend - The problem comes not from the idea of adding more tanks, but from the logistics. Right now on any of the multi-tank fights, you're dedicating 4/6-7 healers at least to keeping tanks alive. That means you can't have as much movement, because theres less people to pick up slack while you do, theres less attention being paid to the raid in general, and theres fewer opportunities for other things to go on. ITs also hard to design a fight where more than 2 tanks are engaged at a single point in time without tons of mobs running amok.
For example, adding another tank on kologarn, besides really being kind of boring for said tank, since all he's doing is standing there tanking rubble every couple minutes and doing subpar dps the rest of the time, basically trash tanking on the boss, would mean that they'd probably have to remove some other form of raid damage, be it eyebeams, or shockwave, or something, to compensate for the fact that you have to heal another tank. Razorscale already has a soft enrage, being the number of flame buffet stacks you can heal the breath through. Plus again, oh boy add tank, so much fun. Adding another tank to XT doesn't do much either, I get to taunt off the other tank so he can run away. He's gonna take it back when the bomb wears off, or I get one. Other than that I'm still just standing there doing subpar DPS, and feeling pretty useless otherwise.
Yes, you could probably add some kind of extra tank to every fight, but you'd have to cut a few things back to make allowances, which could completely ruin, or change the feel of an encounter.Also the real point is that Blizz has stated they don't think that adding a ton of multi-tank encounters is good for the game. They could do it but there wouldn't be much engaging about it, especially for the tanks, which would really defeat the purpose. I tend to agree, for all that it severely limits the options for anyone who wants to tank.
And who says we're only going to get small changes slowly over time. The point is that blizz has to be more careful and pay attention to what they're doing with warriors, which means sometimes things will take longer to get to us. 3.0 was a huge shift, which while it coincided with a shift in philosophy also opened the door to more changes that could be interesting. GC has also talked about some fairly sweeping changes they're working on, that they don't feel they have a comfortable grasp on the exact repercussions of yet. They're talking about changing shield block substantially, and how rage mechanics work, those would be some huge changes, that might make a big difference in how our class plays. But they want to be sure they have them right, before releasing them, because of their concerns.
Would I like those changes now? Yeah completely, but you know what, I'd rather they did that shit right, instead of the halfassed way they handled TG at 3.0, with is massive swings and complete OPness, that left the balanced version feeling weak and useless.
One more thing about tank balance that I think a lot of people ignore. Its pretty clear to me that Blizz is not balancing tanks against each other. They're balancing them against the encounters they design, which is a pretty significant point to keep in mind. With that and from what I get from GC's posts, both about warriors and tanks in general, as well as other posts like ones he makes in the healing forums, I get the sense that warriors are about where they want them as regards the difficulty of tanking any enounter in Ulduar. Its the other classes that need to be shifted around till they feel about the same way. Now thats not to say warrior difficulty is perfect, he acknowledges that it might be a little off, but its close, and they don't want to change anything too drasticly at this point to screw that up. Especially given the other concerns he mentions.Posted 06-26-2009 at 03:21 PM by Aldragoriad
