[Roana]

Source: phaze I certainly have concerns that the devs will get it 100% right the first time; it may take a while for the balancing to settle out and be tweaked.

In fact, I'm pretty certain that there will be growing pains. That's all but unavoidable with such a major shift in game design.

[phaze]

Source: Worldie prot paladins and feral druids can't really do their offspec roles even with gear change.

I agree on the Protadin side for both healing and DPS, and on the Bear-as-healer side.

However, Bear-as-Cat is a solid source of DPS, considering their spec is tweaked for tanking, and do fairly well even in mostly-tank gear.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Worldie It's, exactly like for kittens, both a bless and a curse.

That statement doesn't sit well with me. It's not a blessing and a curse, it's purely a blessing. There is zero negative to being able to perform two roles the way that Druids can at the moment.

You do what is best for the raid, not for yourself, when raiding; when you have the flexibility to do two things, that means your spot is not only more valuable but more assured. A lot of Prot Warriors can easily count off the number of times they've sat outside an instance because there were enough tanks for a new encounter; Feral Druids, not so much. What's the argument? Is it a bad thing that the Feral Druid got to stay in the raid, even though they didn't get to tank the boss that only needed one tank in the first place?

One of the most irritating discussions I've seen on MainTankadin revolved around not picking up certain WotLK Protection talents because it might mean they won't be preferred for tanking some bosses. How selfish can people be? Any player who purposely doesn't pick up an ability that can clearly help their raids in a variety of situations and is easily available in a standard spec for their primary role should be removed from whatever raiding group they're in.


Per my own posts on this subject, I absolutely support 'homogenizing' tanking. I said this last year and I still see zero reason for the variety. My own concerns are as such:

• Deathknights are being designed so that any tree can tank, and are designed so tanking is always fun... wth? They apparently didn't want to take the same effort and put it into the classes they already had to make sure they were 'fun'?
• Feral Druids are now being specialized to Cat and Bear specializations while Warriors, Paladins, and Deathknights are now getting more options for what they can do with a single spec. Why shouldn't Feral Druids be allowed to DPS in their Feral tree like they've been doing? Shouldn't other classes be buffed to this level?
• The reasoning for the new talent distribution is psychotic. I am floored that a developer can say to Warriors, "We think you should have your talents split across three trees, this makes the most sense," then say to Deathknights, "We think we can make the game work by letting you pick up the talents you need from whatever tree you're already in." Nevermind the complete ignorance of class mechanics from a class developer.

[Krashtork]

Source: Worldie Don't get me wrong, i also like healing, i originally rolled this char to heal. What i meant to say is, it's horrible (seriously) to be told "you won't tank since you can heal". It's on the same level of the feral druids' "you won't tank cause you can dps". It's, exactly like for kittens, both a bless and a curse.

No, what sucks is being told: You can't come AT ALL, cause all you can do well is tank since they already have more than enough real dps. Thanks, but being tri-useful at least lets you come.

[Worldie]

Source: Ciderhelm That statement doesn't sit well with me. It's not a blessing and a curse, it's purely a blessing. There is zero negative to being able to perform two roles the way that Druids can at the moment.

For team play, sure, it's a blessing.

However, pretty much like there are druids that rolled druid to tank and are forced into a dps role, there are paladins that rolled paladin to tank, and are forced into a healing role.

That's not completely design fault, it's more because 1 tank encounters where you have to bring 2-3 tanks are fail.



Regarding the rest, the only talent that is "not desiderable" for a main tankadin is Divine Guardian, for dual reason:
1) If you get it, you basically grant a mini-shield wall to your raid every 4 minutes
2) If you are tanking, and use Divine Protection, you're going to literally suicide if there's raid damage.

I for one will take Divine Guardian if it leaves out Divine Protection. Considering the current paladin status however, i can perfectly understand the ones refusing to take it to not give the scrubs another reason to say "sit back and heal".

[Worldie]

Source: Krashtork Thanks, but being tri-useful at least lets you come.

For many people, between being taken but being told to respec-do something different than tanking is worse than not being taken.

Wasting a raid slot where someone with a specific class would perform better than you isn't a great idea if you want to progress. For farm situations, it's different, of course.

But if you are, for example, doing Archimonde for progress, you'll not take your prot warriors as dps, but you'll not take your prot pala to heal as well. You might take the feral druid for DPS, but that's about it.

[kolben]

@ the weird prot warriors can dps thing

This is twisted. Prot warriors in DPS gear can DPS about as good as a Prot Pally can heal in healing gear, and a Feral Druid can heal/wrath spam in their respective offsets. It would only be marginally true if you were talking about a Prot Warrior who has had the fortune of picking up all T6 DPS gear, and even then they would fall way, way short of what a real DPS warrior can do.

Also, we are a pure melee class, no spells, no heals, etc. Tanking or DPS it's all melee combat, we aren't even talking about a huge difference in skills used between the three specs. Generally it comes down to a maximum of two or three talented skills, the rest is generic warrior crap.

This just comes off like a warrior envy statement, and it's bogus. Sorry.

[Worldie]

There are still prot warriors doing proper DPS in dps gear (with proper party, obviously), but i can for sure tell that my healing is complete failure in sunwell.
It's obvious they are FAR behind of a true DPS war. Obviously if i got a war-druid-pala and must do brutallus without swapping, the feral would get to dps, but that's not what i'm talking about.

It's not much about a warrior envy thing.

It's more something i never understood, why prot warriors can't dps, but ferals can and paladins can heal. In our guild, we found out that in "dps races" where you can afford non-specced people (ie, not sunwell), more DPS is always more helpful than more heals.
Well, our main prot warrior is actually full T6 dps geared, differently from my healing gear tho, that might make some difference

[Roana]

Source: Ciderhelm That statement doesn't sit well with me. It's not a blessing and a curse, it's purely a blessing. There is zero negative to being able to perform two roles the way that Druids can at the moment.

Except that if you aren't particularly interested in doing your non-tanking alternative role, that tends to be a lot less fun for you. Doing something for the good of the guild has no value on its own; there needs to be a reason to do that, even if that reason is that these are people you like to play with more than any others. This is not the same as being selfish: it's about doing things that you enjoy, not consistently sacrificing your own fun so that others enjoy raiding more. Not having fun yourself leads to frustration and burn-out and in the long term hurts the "good of the guild".

You do what is best for the raid, not for yourself, when raiding; when you have the flexibility to do two things, that means your spot is not only more valuable but more assured.

I know that this is a pretty conventional view, but nothing that I particularly agree with. In the end, this is not a job, it is a game that I play to have fun. Now, that fun has several components: not just playing the game as you like it, but also socializing with friends, overcoming difficult challenges, and so forth.

But different people value different things, and I don't see why the "good of the guild" should dictate how I have fun. I happen to enjoy healing, personally, but I know plenty of other people who think otherwise. "Beating a raid encounter" is not a good in and of itself. How you do that, what your role in accomplishing that goal was also matters for a lot of people. True, you'll get purple drops either way (though if you get stuck with healing all the time, good luck with getting any tanking gear in most guilds until all the "real" tanks are geared up). But, frankly, I'd guess that a minority of people raid for the shinies alone.

Deathknights are being designed so that any tree can tank, and are designed so tanking is always fun... wth? They apparently didn't want to take the same effort and put it into the classes they already had to make sure they were 'fun'?

Yeah, that was one of the more mind-boggling design decisions that I've read about.

I've always had issues with class overspecialization, so I'm happy they're not doing that any longer with Deathknights. At the same time, I have no clue why they don't see a problem with it for other classes and actually want to reintroduce it for feral druids. I could buy that a major talent reorganization to reduce overspecialization might be too much work at this point, but I don't get why they pursue specialization for some classes as a goal and for others try to dispose of it.

[Worldie]

I think that they are orienting the DK trees to specific kind of tanking... Unholy with some points in Blood and Frost looks the "main" tanking tree to me, Bone Armor and Anti Magic Shield are like... sex?

[kolben]

Follow-up to my comments above

Fair enough. In a DPS race I would think a druid tank would be ideal since their threat is based on actual damage. Personally I can't wait to finally do threat through damage again, and not weird modifiers to my wet noodle skills. What is so devastating about Devastate when it hits for like 350 raid buffed? lol

The thing with warriors is, we have mostly the same skills regardless of our spec. It's pretty much the gear, the 21/31/41 pt talents, and the buffs to common warrior skills you pick up on the way down the trees that separate the specs. On the very rare occasion that I respec MS for a few hours I change out 3 buttons in each stance, that's it. Exchanging MS or SS, Piercing Howl for Concussion Blow, and I drop Sweeping Strikes in where Devastate was (i know it's Deathwish now).

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Roana Except that if you aren't particularly interested in doing your non-tanking alternative role, that tends to be a lot less fun for you. Doing something for the good of the guild has no value on its own; there needs to be a reason to do that, even if that reason is that these are people you like to play with more than any others. This is not the same as being selfish: it's about doing things that you enjoy, not consistently sacrificing your own fun so that others enjoy raiding more. Not having fun yourself leads to frustration and burn-out and in the long term hurts the "good of the guild".

The alternative is that you can step out of the raid. If there is one boss and that boss requires one tank, then only one tank is necessary. Usually in a raid this means other people are asked to step out if this is progression content and if this is a progression raiding group.

Who is asked to step out? In the guilds I've worked with, it's voluntary before it's required. If no one volunteers out, the Prot Warriors have usually been sidelined for progression kills. However, this never prevents the Feral Druid from volunteering himself or herself out first, they just choose not to because they do, in fact, enjoy DPS (or at least the chance at epic loot they're looking for).

[Worldie]

That's however all past fortunately.

It will be interesting to see how in WotLK they'll handle single-tank encounters... if there'll be any. Probably will be in 10 men, but they were supposed to be single tanked anyway...

25 men will be interesting...
And i loved how they solved the 4 horsemen issue for 25 people :P i bet they have removed the mark mechanic as well.

[SuperFlounder]

I do sympathize with pallies who hate to heal. There is nothing I'd like to do less than heal people. Perhaps there are other, new raid roles blizzard can think up, give to warriors and equalize tanking. If it was healing however... yeah, I originally rolled a pally and rerolled warrior because I specifically did not like healing people. Enough said about that.

This is just me personally, of the roles currently available, I think it would be really cool if the third warrior role was some sort of range physical, hunter-like class. Range combat with missile weapons is traditionally within the realm of the warrior in the real world after all. It could fit in wow. That would be a role I would like to see. That would be something that would make me okay with equalizing the tanks.

I'm glad this thread was reopened. I apologize if my particular post started off the particular QQing. I wasn't trying to QQ but sometimes you just gotta state what you believe and why.

[TomHuxley]

Source: Worldie What i meant to say is, it's horrible (seriously) to be told "you won't tank since you can heal". It's on the same level of the feral druids' "you won't tank cause you can dps".

Isn't that only true if you put yourself before raid success? When I first OTed kara I didn't hate Maiden, NB, and Prince because there was nothing for an OT to do, I threw on my piddly DPS gear and threw out the best (if sad at the time) DPS I could (biding my time till I could spam execute). And then I worked at trying get another set of gear so I would be as useful as possible when called upon to do it. In ZA our tankadin would volunteer to let me tank the eagle boss, because his off-healing helped make sure we didn't lose any DPS (back when that was a hard fight).

To me "fun" is succeeding with my friends; sure I want to tank, so I've worked very hard to be the best tank I can be, and my gear and skill let's me MT essentially whenever I want, but it wasn't handed to me, and if I can do something else (or if we're short a geared mage but only need 1 tank) I always do what I can to make us succesful. Especially as RL, I consider it my job to get the other 9/24 members through the encounter as effectively as possible, ego be damned.

Especially with getting a second free spec in WotLK, it would seem that having more flexibility ala true hybrid classes is a boon, not a curse, unless you just insist that you only want to play one way. Indeed, one reason I was levelling my ret pally (which is the spec I prefer, even without the upcoming DPS buff) was so I could bring him in if AOE tanking was needed. Now it sounds like there will be little point, and the game will not afford me the fun of trying out new things like that.

Now if only my ret pallies gear wouldn't look identical to fury warriors in WotLK, it'd almost be ok

[Worldie]

I also always help the guild when i can.

I've been Ret for all our first Brutallus kills, i've many times swapped healing gear and healed. That doesn't mean i like doing that.

As someone stated before, it's a game, if you have to give up your personal fun to increase the other's one, it's fine a few times, but it becomes horrible after a bit.




Maybe it's like that, i think i'm the only paladin that gets threatened with a gkick if i dare to go holy tho :\

[TomHuxley]

Source: Roana Except that if you aren't particularly interested in doing your non-tanking alternative role, that tends to be a lot less fun for you. Doing something for the good of the guild has no value on its own; there needs to be a reason to do that, even if that reason is that these are people you like to play with more than any others. This is not the same as being selfish: it's about doing things that you enjoy, not consistently sacrificing your own fun so that others enjoy raiding more. Not having fun yourself leads to frustration and burn-out and in the long term hurts the "good of the guild".

I'm sorry, I don't know how to say this without sounding personal, but that's exactly the same as selfishness. In fact, I think placing greater importance on the roll you get to play than on the final raid result is the text-book definition of selfishness.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you have fun playing the game (everyone should) but we don't put up with that attitude in our guild.

[Jasra]

Source: Worldie Well, our main prot warrior is actually full T6 dps geared, differently from my healing gear tho, that might make some difference

This is probably a big factor. Because raids have so many more dpsers than healers, and because in non-hardcore guilds the core players tend to be healers and tanks while the dpsers tend to have weaker attendance and more turnover, it's been my experience that it's radically easier to keep offspec healing gear up to date that nobody else needs than equivalent offspec dps gear.

[Worldie]

No, it's just a matter with protector and vanquisher droprate compared to conqueror :|

[Jasra]

Source: Worldie No, it's just a matter with protector and vanquisher droprate compared to conqueror :|

True, specifically for Tier tokens of course.