[Nicki]

Wow blizzard appeased me!

Impressed at this change, they seem to be headings where id prefer they went. Equal but different.

[Gellor]

Shield Block now increases chance to block and amount blocked by 100% for 5 seconds. Cooldown increased to 30 seconds.

Been confirmed by a beta player that this blocks ALL attacks for 5 seconds at double SBV, the increased SBV also affecting SS damage!

[Arudar]

Source: Gellor Shield Block now increases chance to block and amount blocked by 100% for 5 seconds. Cooldown increased to 30 seconds. Been confirmed by a beta player that this blocks ALL attacks for 5 seconds at double SBV, the increased SBV also affecting SS damage!

Oh my. Has this been confirmed from any other sources?

[Gellor]

Here is the link to EJ forums with a screen print of the combat log.

[Warrior] WotLK talent Preview/Discussion - Page 32 - Elitist Jerks

[Hypatia]

I think the main thing that Blizzard is doing here is re-defining the baseline abilities of a tank. That adds homogeneity, it's true, but that's kind of the point. We all (Blizzard included) have a much much better understanding of what a tank needs to bring to the table now than we did in the past. We've come a long long way from the MC-style tank-and-spanks to today, and that holds for everyone tanking--from fives mans up to endgame raiding in the Sunwell.

In vanilla WoW, the big lesson learned was that all tanking classes need to have similar basic levels of HP, damage mitigation, and threat generation. Almost all tanks were warriors, because warriors (whether they were protection or not) were almost always superior to bear-form druids and protection paladins. As a result, those classes/specs were changed in BC to bring things more into line.


Over the course of BC, though, now that those most-definitely-core features were made common, it hilighted other differences--and changes in encounter design (and raid size, for raiding) also factored in here. The first really obvious issue was the difference in difficulty of holding threat on large numbers of targets. Paladins had a serious advantage in terms of their abilities here, because consecrate was so much better than the tools warriors and druids had available. Druids were also a bit better off than warriors, because their threat-from-damage was higher, whereas warriors depended more on threat-from-special-bonuses, making a druid's swipe work out better than a warrior's thunderclap and cleave.

This also had an impact on raid design--in vanilla WoW, large endgame raids generally had a lot of warriors, which meant there were a lot of off-tanks available. Smaller raids in BC increased the importance of CC abilities over off-tanking, decreased the number of powerful adds in some sorts of trash packs, and led to the introduction of "swarm packs", where there are sometimes a whole bunch of little guys who need to be tanked. All of these changes had... interesting interactions with AoE tanking abilities.

Blizzard did work to apply some band-aids to this issue, by making warrior Thunderclap and Improved Thunderclap work better. They also made some changes to druid abilities, trying to re-tune how some of the threat scaling from damage worked. These tweaks have worked out well to decrease the difference in power, but it's still there.

The other big thing that became obvious over the course of BC was just how big a deal it is to have the oh-shit buttons and debuffs that a warrior brings to the table. Blizzard was smart and did not include any new boss encounters where Shield Wall is almost mandatory in BC (contrast with Maexxna), but they did include some where Last Stand and Shield Wall give serious serious benefits (25-man Kael, for example.) While every tank class can successfully main tank (nearly) every fight in BC, this was another set of abilities that had a clear impact on the desirability of certain tanks for certain fights.

Related to that: People have mentioned that feral druids can either do DPS or tank as the occasion demands. This is true, but of course, it also means that druids are often sidelined to DPS when other tanks are available. My own guild has only a few fights where we really prefer our druid to MT--places where druids really shine. In other fights, the druid will often be one MT during multi-tank fights, but on single tank fights we almost always use somebody else. Druids also showed, through their limited access to potions, another class of "having oh shit buttons is nice."

The final thing I'll note is that over the course of BC, we've all learned how these abilities scale (or begin to break down) near the top end. Everything is still within the range of workable limits, but there are places where it's obvious that further scaling would be tricky. Threat scaling has become an issue for most tanks. Druids have had to deal with exceeding the armor cap. Blizzard has had to deal with tanks reaching supernatural levels of avoidance. So, those are things that can be addressed as well to keep things running smoothly.

Anyway, that's where we stand, I think.


In LK, it looks like Blizzard has decided to address these issues in a more significant way. A new expansion makes it easier to make major changes to class abilities, rather than simply trying to make old abilities work better. It also provides a good place for major mechanics changes. The most significant major mechanics change for tanks is in crushing blows--and that change hilights one of the biggest differences between tanks pre-LK: druids work differently. Without crushing blows but with BC style itemization for druids, bears would be very desirable for many fights. This leads me to believe that the lack of gear with bonus armor in LK isn't an oversight on Blizzard's part: They're going to make bears end up with a less large armor lead on the other tanks. Why do I think that? Well, it decreases the additional power of a bear's armor mitigation, and it also reduces the speed with which bears will approach the armor cap. A win all around.

But that, of course, means that bears have lost their "niche"--because they really are frequently relegated to that niche now. And that hilights the most glaring weakness I noted above: oh-shit buttons.

This, of course, leads to making it more important to make oh-shit buttons a baseline tanking feature. Without that change to crushing blows (and the changes to bear itemization that I'm projecting), Blizzard could probably get away without making this sort of thing standard-issue. But with those changes, it becomes very important to give them to druids. And if you give them to both warriors and druids, then it also makes sense to give them to paladins as well--because then it's something you can depend on for encounter design everywhere, from five-mans up to end-game raids.

AoE tanking is a similar sort of thing. Warriors' powerful advantage over other classes has been shared around a bit, which means their biggest weakness is also now a clear choice for something to even out. So, make AoE tanking a baseline--it already almost was, so Blizzard is just making the divide between the best and the worst AoE tanks smaller. In my opinion, this will have the most impact on five-man encounter design--in five mans, you get one tank. If there's a large division between the good and the bad for AoE tanking, that means that either the good will trivialize encounters or the bad will be hopelessly bad at them. (Or, the current situation: The good make things really easy, and the bad have to struggle.)


So, that's how I see the issues and changes that we're seeing now for LK. Every tank now has baseline levels of survivability, threat generation, oh-shit abilities, and AoE tanking abilities. There'll be variation between the classes in terms of "good" vs "best", but not "bad" vs "great". And, because it's clearly a design goal, now, it should be easier for Blizzard to say "Clearly, this class's AoE threat isn't good enough and we need to fix it." That's a good thing.


I don't think this is going to make all of the classes indistinguishable, by the way. There are enough serious mechanical differences between the classes that will never be the case. And I don't think that we're going to end up with any one class being clearly superior to the others (or at least not for very long!), because Blizzard is clearly saying with these changes "Any tank will be able to tank any encounter."


On the subject of flexibility--I think I'm going to have to wait and see what Blizzard has in mind for respecs. My current expectation is that we're going to each have two specs we can switch between freely when out of combat, but that inscriptions will not swap (and will be expensive and destroyed when replaced, like top-level enchantments.)

Stop and think about the implications of that for a moment.


My expectation in terms of flexibility is that everybody is going to have one role which they prefer (and in which they shine), and they'll specialize their inscriptions to support that role. If inscriptions are done well, they'll lead to some pretty interesting choices between maximizing your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses. A warrior tank might choose between an inscription that powers up her thunderclap, narrowing the gap for AoE tanking. Or, she might choose one that powers up her oh-shit buttons, increasing the lead in that area. Finally, she might pick something that boosts bloodbath and increases AoE tanking and AoE DPS both by a bit. In my opinion, the right level of power for inscriptions is one where we each feel like we don't have enough of them, but no one of them is a must-have.

On the subject of specs: This is actually really interesting. Right now, feral druids are the most flexible tank spec, because with a gear change they can do very very well at both DPS and tanking. If we each get two specs, however, I think that changes in an interesting way. Warriors are the new feral druids: they can with a simple gear-and-spec switch go from excellent tanking to excellent melee DPS. Paladins can choose to be tank/healer switches or tank/melee dps switches. Druids... are interesting. With the new "ferals have to choose more between cat or bear", druids who want to be tank/melee dps won't actually be changing many spec points at all--so I wouldn't be at all surprised for druids to prefer to be tank/heal or tank/magic DPS, and never tank/melee DPS. Why? Because a bear spec is not an awful cat spec--so it's more effective to go for something really different than something that's relly close.

Anyway, I hope those thoughts have at least shown that we really need to know where Blizzard is going with their respec thing before we can say much about the relative merits of tanking classes in terms of their flexibility.


Here ends my wall of text.

[Worldie]

Wall of text crits you for over nine thousand.

However, very well said, you got my seal of approval.

[Jasra]

Source: Hypatia If we each get two specs, however, I think that changes in an interesting way. Warriors are the new feral druids: they can with a simple gear-and-spec switch go from excellent tanking to excellent melee DPS.

I don't know how "two specs" would work, but purely for the sake of making a point I'm presuming that they're two specs that can be changed at the push of a button once you're out of combat, and furthermore that there are no rules forcing dissimilarity. I can say that today in 2.4, I would have no reservations making my spec#2 a dps spec. However the bloat in the current prot warrior incarnation of 3.0 looks bad enough that I would need both an OT/AE spec and an MT spec as opposed to "tank" and "dps" specs.

Edit: You know, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that the most common "2 spec" talent configuration under the above assumptions won't be tank/dps, tank/heal, and so on, but more like dps/pvp, threat/mitigation, OT/MT, etc.

[Nicki]

On a side note im finding it hard not to spend 60 points in prot as a paladin...and thats skipping things like spell warding and devo aura..../sigh

[Jasra]

Source: Gellor Shield Block now increases chance to block and amount blocked by 100% for 5 seconds. Cooldown increased to 30 seconds. Been confirmed by a beta player that this blocks ALL attacks for 5 seconds at double SBV, the increased SBV also affecting SS damage!

The increased SBV does not affect SS damage, I just checked.

[Tenraiel]

*bows before Hypatia*

Well said.

[Hypatia]

Source: Jasra Edit: You know, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that the most common "2 spec" talent configuration under the above assumptions won't be tank/dps, tank/heal, and so on, but more like dps/pvp, threat/mitigation, OT/MT, etc.

Maybe, maybe. I think it depends on what kinds of tanks your guild has, and what sort of approach to progression it has. Does it make more sense to have one guy who tanks everything, or a team who handles different stuff?

My experience with needing to re-spec to different tanking specs in BC has been pretty reasonable. I've re-done my tanking spec primarily for changes from one tier to another. My guild is pretty casual for a raiding guild, however. On the opposite side, I don't think you'll ever see a hard-core progression guild that isn't using absolutely every tool at its disposal to go fast.

Anyway, sticking with my actual experience: I could see re-speccing to a tank A/tank B build when we're up against a boss that's a real piece of work in terms of damage output--about as often as I re-spec my tanking build now. For the rest, I think an argument similar to what I said about feral druids applies: does it make more sense to have a first spec that's optimal for one case and pretty good for a second case, and a second spec that swaps those? Or is it better to have a second spec that's good at a completely different thing?

Both of those are min/maxing, of a sort. I'd say that the "two tank" setup makes sense primarily if you don't trust your other tanks, however. If you have a good tanking team and coordinate as a group to cover all the bases most optimally, the "tank/other" setups make more sense.

The big thing, though, for me, is that a two-spec setup (with the "press a button while out of combat and switch" interpretation, as you say) would bring these choices back to the game. It'd be nicer to have hybrid specs that worked, shallower talent trees, etc... but I'll take what I can get.


On the subject of bloat in protection talents: Maybe. Right now I can see only a couple of things I'd consider switching around, after I fill up to 51 for Shockwave. I actually feel kind of less bloated looking at this set of talents than looking at our current set. But at the same time, I can see that I feel this way mainly because Vigilance and Sword and Board are weird. If S&B gets improved a bit, I'll have a much tougher time. Have to see what Blizzard does with the "warrior pass" that's coming, I suppose.

[Tizack]

I tanked Nexus a couple time and Utgarde aswell so far on Beta. i think AE Tanking is easy as hell now. if u where a good amount of str on your gear which most of t6 has and it looks like that is how blizzard will be itemizing tank gear in WotLK AE tanking is going to be a breeze for warrior. Shockwave is a great ability and used with Cleave and Tclap u can easly hold 8 mobs. Also they have the new talent incite which increase crit chance of cleave HS and Tclap so its even more AE threat there.

I haven't tanked any of the mid 70 or 78-80 instances yet but i am thingking with the gear scaling nothing should change with shckwave being a great additon to the warrior arsenal and by all means helping the warrior be one of the best AE tanks.

[kolben]

I enjoy being a fullon prot warrior, as do many of you I assume (or Prot. Pally).
I see the changes bringing back some options that have been missing since TBC.
Tanking Stratholme with [item]The Untamed Blade[/item] and my favorite healer? Hell yeah lol, i'd do that kind of tanking again any day.

My prediction for what it's worth is that all tanking classes will enjoy a good deal of flexibility, which will make the game more fun. Think of the very small variations that are viable for a warrior main tank right now, it's essentially 3-4 pts to play with.

I did an extremely fast heroic Botanica run with a guildie who needs rep in there on his alt shaman healer. It was silky smooth.. except for the 3 areas where you need AE. Those went fine, but talk about hustle to hold aggro on all that junk. I'm looking forward to that being easy again.