[Hypatia]

This post by Hypatia was part of the Tank Design Philosophy thread that has been floating around General Discussion. It was copied to the news forum because it was an excellent read. Enjoy!

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.

[Ciderhelm]

Moved to the News page!

[Finelle]

Excellent read indeed! Have the spec switches been pinned down as something you can do in between encounters?

[KillZero]

Very nice article. Hit the nail on the head.

I think for anyone following the expansion builds, this definitely rings true. Blizz is not only combating the tanking shortage by adding another class that is able to tank, but by making more specs of the available classes able to tank in a capacity that is more realistic.

At the same time, there is an ever increasing number of protection warriors (myself included) that rolled their class and spec to be the crème de la crème of tanking, realizing that because of their choice, their seemingly higher consumption costs become insurmountable, due to their far lower DPS. Yup, it's true. I could time a dailies run on my warrior and on my wife's rogue and it would not only be nowhere close, but to a crippling degree, where if I did not do them with her, I was simply being stupid.

So, how do you add DPS to some and add tanking to everyone else? Delete crushing blows and bring druids (the one current tanking class that can't use shields) back to where they belong. Now we're at the point where we can start thinking about base stats. Now, we start loving strength. Why? Because, what doesn't strength help us with? Oh yeah, avoidance. That thing they made WAY too important in end game tanking for the last expansion. Everything else... well, STR4DAWIN...

It seems like, this exansion, the major changes won't be in itemization change (although I suspect there will be a healthy dosage), but instead in philosophy change. We've seen what the ability changes mean for every tanking class... easier tanking for everyone.

So, now what? I know. Build DPS ability off of the stats we expect people to be stacking while they tank. Did someone say Strength earlier? It may have been me, lots of people were shouting stuff...

Guess what Blizz seems to be doing in the expansion - building the bonuses that Strength has to those that carry it in surplus and increasing the need for those that don't.

Basically, if Blizzard can acheive what they expect, we shall see the day where maginal DPS, relative tanking, and so-so player skill will equate to what is required out of most instances. This just means that any one of us better than what they expect, will be that much better at what we do on a daily basis.

And there ends MY wall of text...

[Klimpen]

Only note I'd like to make is on the difference between the consolidation of role [the Homogenization] and playstyle that some people seem to be having trouble with.

They are different, and playstyle will be preserved in WotLK, for whatever class you play. The consolidation of role is more about set minimums on expected output of any class within the role.

</end point>

[veneretio]

Warriors still have Shield Bash, Spell Reflect, 3 Taunts, Disarm (soon Shield Break) and an AOE fear. These are things that could play a big role in the expansion if Blizzard lets them.

[Dunmail]

There's also the issue of the protection tree, 'loosing' a defining skill as a band aid to a 5 man tanking shortage that is specific to the warrior class, with the homoginzation (iirc) of other classes not having that 'class muddying'. An argument of all pallys can thunderclap wouldn't work as you could say all warrior's can thunderclap.

This is the one area I'd personally be interested in seeing how they eventually resolve this as it did seem a strange penalty to single that particular class tree out, due to gamers getting fed up with the role, wanting a break, or just sick of running idiots and situationally unaware retards through scenarios that Blizzard exacerbated with moving the goalposts on heroic keys. Wasn't a huge deal for me I rolled a warrior from a dps class for a challenge and experiencing a tank shortage, the keys coincided with my levelling/kz progression. It wasn't until MGT emerged that I really did see what the complaints had been (beyond raids), especially if you did look at a groups gearing. Fine if their abilities exceed their gearing, but if they match.....

This is another area I'd be interested in seeing how they manage as from TBC, it's only partially functioned, especially if you look on the class forums. At the moment it seems that experienced/geared tanks limit runs, or are picky with whom you do runs with. Can't disagree with that as costs and experience eventually drive you to be selfish like that. Flipside is newer tanks are being punted (group leadership...) due to being 'undergeared' at sensible gear levels, but not to a groups expectations. You can see the homogenization and extra class being the thinking here, but given the lowest common denominator being the gamer, that side is the interesting part. In that respect maybe a shakeup is a very good thing, if the level playing field has correct falls to all four sides.

[Muggs]

I think "homogenization" is getting tossed around to liberally here. Homogenizing means you're making everything the same "consistency" that means the talent trees or as I ment, the items are all going to be the same. I don't think they are making the tanks the same, but they are narrowing the gap between them.

[Dunmail]

That's partially what I was thinking about, you can see the logic behind panic buttons for druids, the tweaks to Pallys and the AoE perks to warriors. It was also the part after that with the warrior protection tree, the only one of the current 3 tanking classes to have an ability pulled and made available to the other aspects of the class. It is how that emerges when the next beta to shuffle (assuming any complaints/suggestions/re-workings have gone on) the talents/classes/balances around that I'm interested in, and no doubt many others as there are a couple of blue posts around commenting on it being a work in progress.

[fwstrongiv]

I am encouraged greatly by the subsiquent flexibility a Warrior Tank will glean from the proposed changes in WoLK. Perhaps I will feel less like a one legged man in a grape stomping contest now, when tanking multiple. My tab button will thank me, and Blizzard.

[Nicki]

its better that more of an equal playing field is presented.

Still hopefully we end up with some more balance. The best tank atm is the third best dps while the other 2 tanking classes dps specs (ye ferals share same spec for both roles) are inbetween enh shammies and shadow priests...

Hopefully the closeness will eliminate the "we bring warrior cos best tank" attitude completely as it has ruined the game for me several times eventhough i was just as capable. Even to the point of a guild argument debating whether or not to even have a paladin tank! this was pre 2.3 but stigmas die hard.

[Kavtor]

Source: Nicki Hopefully the closeness will eliminate the "we bring warrior cos best tank" attitude completely as it has ruined the game for me several times eventhough i was just as capable.

Something to remember there is that a lot of guild main tanks are warriors because we've been the guild main tank for 3 years now. Balancing the classes out is a good thing, but you're still going to likely find more warriors already holding down the main tank spot, because there's no reason to break a raid formula that's worked for so long, and we've got a long history of trust and experience built up in the raid group.

I'm sure that's going to cause more grief for re-rolling Death Knights come WotlK. They'll be excited and hoping to main tank, but another player will often already have that position, and the trust of the guild.

[Alent]

Seniority isn't a problem for us, we respect seniority. Players hold seniority.

The problem is the mistaken idea that it's the class and not the player.

Player > Class.

[bludwork]

disagree but times change and people like me outgrow the game. Uniqueness of the classes is what made wow "wow". From what I'm seeing you could pretty much just login and be presented with "tank" "dps" "healer" and they would all be the same. All tanks have shield wall and thunderclap. It's like all healers having battle rezzes and innervates. The uniqueness is gone and to me that's a sad thing.

[Joanadark]

Warriors still have Shield Bash, Spell Reflect, 3 Taunts, Disarm (soon Shield Break) and an AOE fear. These are things that could play a big role in the expansion if Blizzard lets them.

this.


And you guys don't care about silence. or mana drain.

HOW many bosses in TBC silenced again? Oh yeah. Alot. Including pivotal encounters that shaped everyone in the raiding community's perceptions like Gruul.

[Darmon]

Source: Joanadark this. And you guys don't care about silence. or mana drain. HOW many bosses in TBC silenced again? Oh yeah. Alot. Including pivotal encounters that shaped everyone in the raiding community's perceptions like Gruul.

Silence is a problem for warriors also. Half of our skills are spells. Bad luck getting a silence when you have to aoe taunt to save clothies, or failing to keep thunderclap/demo shout up for the big hitters.
Mana drain? what about rage drain when we have to stance dance to break fears. or stance dance to do mocking blow.

I never saw a warriors asking to get better versions of paladin tools. Bubble up to remove those nasty stacks of debuffs( and remove bubble immediatly if you want to keep agro). 40 yards Range taunt. Superior magic defence ( aura + talents beats def stance +talents magic reduction). Snare imunity. The list can keep going on all sides, and without any point really.

What does it matter is colaboration between tanks. Pala give his tank buddy auras, blessings, get in return shouts, debuffs on boss.

Funny thing about gruul you mentioned as the big turning point of tanking. More than half of first kills made by guilds were done with bears. Huge armor + hp easy to get in early tbc made a lot of difference.
In the end there are 3 bosses that matters where silence is a problem. Gruul, Mother Shaz and Azgalor. All can be tanked by any tank class, and funny thing at pre-parry nerf to Mother and Azgalor, when our pala tanks did just a fraction of auto-attacks, getting that way a huge reduction on parry-hasted hits.

[SuperFlounder]

Silences are a completely valid form of boss mechanic. Those are only three fights, two of which the silences only affect healers and you threat, not whether you'll take burst damage during it. As for Gruul, I've seen pallies tank him plenty of times. Sometimes they get crushed during a silence, since it happens more often as the fight progresses, yes, paladins are not the most effective PROGESSION tank for that fight. However, I have seen many more warriors die during the later grows to just plain crushes due to parries (especially from the OTs or dps that move to his front to avoid cave in's) then a pally's holy shield wearing off during the silence. As for threat, you're capped by the OT, not the MT so I don't see why that's a problem.

[Joanadark]

40 yards Range taunt.

   *TAUNT*
   O   <(^^)>                            -41 yards-                                                      O
 You   Monster                                                                                        Warlock
                                                                                                    pulled aggro

OUT OF RANGE
OUT OF RANGE
OUT OF RANGE

[Joanadark]

I never saw a warriors asking to get better versions of paladin tools.

Thats cause for tanking, the warrior tools were decent and the paladin tools sucked.
Thats THE ENTIRE POINT.

Superior magic defence ( aura + talents beats def stance +talents magic reduction).

Righteous Fury + Spell Warding =/= Def Stance + Imp Def Stance
RF+SW doesnt even equal Defensive Stance all by it's self.
Aura?

lolwut?

Mana drain? what about rage drain

One Phase, of One Boss, in The Entire Game drains rage.

No fight where you have to stance dance is threat sensitive, because guess what? That fear you just broke? All the DPS are running around during it, not DPSing, cause they are, in fact, feared.

Funny thing about gruul you mentioned as the big turning point of tanking. More than half of first kills made by guilds were done with bears. Huge armor + hp easy to get in early tbc made a lot of difference.

That was exactly my point.
Gruul, as the introductory raid encounter of BC, shaped a lot of people's perceptions about raid content which they carried forward with them into later progression.
Bears, despite their many problems, became very very well accepted and represented in TBC raiding guilds in great part BECAUSE the very first fight people faced favored them so much.

It always seemed odd to me how guilds could happily use bears who have:
-NO stance damage reduction
-NO panic buttons (not even potions or healthstones/nightmare seeds)
-still LOWER avoidance

...and then turn around and talk about how terrible paladins were because we had:
-a lesser stance damage reduction
-worse panic buttons.



additionally, our advantages in threat gen were meaningless because DPS didn't get the gear to be threat capped until early t6 and not taking crushing blows didn't impress anyone because nobody even knew what crushing blows WERE except the prot paladins for a good while going into TBC.

Silences are a completely valid form of boss mechanic.

Ok...
So are Disarms.
If every single instance contained a boss that disarmed the tank, and many guilds denied warriors a progression tanking slot because of it, would you still say that it's a valid form of boss mechanic?
You only say that cause silences barely inconvenience you. You can't taunt and you can't debuff. A silenced paladin can....autoattack.

Those are only three fights, two of which the silences only affect healers and you threat, not whether you'll take burst damage during it. As for Gruul, I've seen pallies tank him plenty of times. Sometimes they get crushed during a silence

You just contradicted yourself.

Sometimes they get crushed during a silence, since it happens more often as the fight progresses, yes, paladins are not the most effective PROGESSION tank for that fight. However, I have seen many more warriors die during the later grows to just plain crushes due to parries (especially from the OTs or dps that move to his front to avoid cave in's) then a pally's holy shield wearing off during the silence.

You just said though that you've only seen paladins tanking it when it's on farm and overgeared by both tanks and healers. By that point it doesn't matter if you CAN do something.

The only tanking anybody cares about IS progression tanking.
Hunter Pets, Moonkin, and Shadow Priests tank non-progression bosses. If you can't tank progression, you're not a tank, you're a nothing.
This is why the whole "well, you pallies are good for farm stuff and aoe, and we warriors are good against stuff that hits slow and hard, and progression encounters because of our cooldowns" arguement is silly. That's not a niche, its the DEFINITION of tanking.

[bludwork]

Too much misinformation here, and really anything this discussion comes up it ends up being paladin vs warrior abilities; and we're all tired of that.

Gruul didn't shape anything.

The tank who took you through Kara was the tank you to to gruul.
The tank who took you through Kara was the tank who you run heroics with.

See the picture? Your tank just didn't show up one day in some blues and say "hey i'm a warrior let me tank gruul". There were a lot of things that put you as THE guy to tank gruul, and it had little to do with class.