[Ciderhelm]

Ghostcrawler, one of the Blizzard voices on the Wrath of the Lich King Beta forums, has given details on the new philosophy for tanks. I have some concerns which I'll address after the quotes.

The information contained in these comments is good. Ghostcrawler is in the unenviable position of giving feedback to the testers and, by extension, to the general WoW community. There is plenty to look forward to and the approach they're taking seems generally positive.

Source: Ghostcrawler Threads have popped up in several class forums that seem to be converging on a few of the same issues. So rather than cross-posting a lot, I thought I would start a new thread. Tanking design: 1) Our goal in Lich King is for all 4 tanking classes to be viable. 2) We would like for tanking to be a little more fun. I'm going to leave this vague on purpose, but it is definitely a concern. 3) In 5-player instances, most warriors, druids, paladins and death knights should be effective tanks. The healing specs may have a harder time than the dps specs. Arms wariors, Fury warriors, Ret paladins, Ferals and most DKs should do fine. 4) In 5-player heroics, the expectation is that the tank has a heavy investment in tanking talents and appropriate gear. Arms warriors might have trouble tanking a heroic unless they overgear the instance. 5) For raids, we want all 4 tank classes to be viable. If your group has e.g. a Prot paladin and Feral druid as main tanks with appropriate gear and reasonable skill, you should be good to go. 6) This is a shift in philosophy for us. Previously, we sometimes tried to steer Ferals as being better off tanks than main tanks. We also expected specific classes to appear in the raid. Our new assumption is that you might have any of the 4 tanking classes as a tank. We are trying to achieve as much parity as we can among the 4 tanks without making them too similar. If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed. 7) This is a big one: the game isn't finished. We aren't spending too much effort yet to make sure mitigation, threat and tools are similar across the 4 classes at level 80 in blue or purple gear. Likewise, your talent trees and core abilities aren't finished. Tanking (and PvP) need to have a lot of other pieces of the game in place before we can really get the numbers right. It's fine (useful even) to point out when you feel a particular ability, talent, class or build is too good or not good enough. But please don't infer the work in progress as a reflection of our intent. If we end up changing our minds or if things don't work out, it will be posted here. 8) There are a lot of changes in Lich King that change tanking and raiding in general. I won't list them all out here, but keep in mind things like itemization changes, widespread raid buffs, consumables, UI changes, etc. Just keep them in mind. We're not in Tempest Keep anymore. Concerns or feedback? This is a great place for it. WoW Forums -> Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King

Followed up with:

Source: Ghostcrawler We would still like to have tanking "flavors" as you put it, but I want to be a little careful when I say that because some people have taken that to mean that their class won't be good enough to tank the content they want. If druids had gigantic health pools but lower mitigation and avoidance than a warrior, that would be tanking flavor. It would mean you heal the bears a little different -- they might drain more mana, but the damage would be more predictable. In really long fights, the warrior might have an advantage. In a fight where a boss hit quickly for less damage per hit, the warrior might have an advantage. In fights with periods of really big damage, the druid might have an advantage. In magic fights where armor was less of a factor, the druid might have an advantage. This is just an example. Our overriding concern is making sure the tanks have the tools, threat and mitigation they need to tank. A secondary concern is making sure they don't feel too similar. WoW Forums -> Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King

I've had the ability to jump in and get to work on my Warrior on Beta, though I haven't had a chance to jump in any of the instances and test the tanking mechanics. I'll do this soon, and until then, will rely on the intuition of others on these forums and the official forums.

That said, my own concerns -- feel free to disagree -- with the quotes above stem from just a few lines:

Source: Ghostcrawler 7) This is a big one: the game isn't finished. We aren't spending too much effort yet to make sure mitigation, threat and tools are similar across the 4 classes at level 80 in blue or purple gear. Likewise, your talent trees and core abilities aren't finished.

My issue with this is that it's 7th on a long list of philosophy changes. I'm not sure I'd call them changes, since they've put in so much effort from the beginning of Burning Crusade to make all tanks useful on as many encounters as possible. Granted, we know they've made a good number of balance mistakes, but it's clear that their intention was to get 3 viable classes, and in the end it's worked out that way.

What Blizzard is doing is normalizing -- or, as the lactophiles on this forum call it, homogenizing -- the tank classes. They are dulling down many of the bigger distinctions between classes to create a broad set of tools for all four classes. In my opinion, this is good.

But the problem comes in what I quoted. 7th in their list, and stated as something they haven't really worked on, is the actual work of balancing it. The actual work of balancing it is precisely where Blizzard has had problems over the last two years. Getting abilities balanced, getting gear balanced, getting talent trees to be sensible, and making this fun for classes should not be secondary. That is by far Blizzard's biggest weakness in regards to tanking, and it has taken months (and, in some cases, years) to fix imbalance issues between tank classes. That said, it can clearly be done and they have the team to do it; if they pull it off, it should be great.

My hope is that people don't stop raising concerns until we get a real sense of balance between the classes.

Source: ghostcrawler If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed.

Brace for it, Warriors.

Let's be clear on a few things:

• The majority of main tanks in this game are Warriors;
• This is partly due to guilds that have been using them since they were the only viable tanks;
• This is partly due to the culture generated by Warriors to encourage Warrior tanks;
• This is partly due to the culture generated by healing Paladins and Druids to discourage Paladin and Druid tanks;
• This is partly due to the itemization hurdle and raid encounter mechanics hurdle that Protection Paladins faced at TBC launch.

Let's also be clear that tanks are, by and large, all useful at the moment. Normalizing them in WotLK is a good thing, but it's also no stretch to say that Sunwell guilds are benefited by all three classes.

What Ghostcrawler's comments mean to me is that Blizzard wants to change the culture using in-game mechanics. In other words, they want guilds that have had Warrior MTs for years to reconsider. If they've thought this out in an honest way, this means Warriors are going to take a sub-par set of mechanics as a matter of policy.

Promoting equal opportunity among the classes is good -- it's one of the things we do at TankSpot. But a decision to change a cultural perspective on a corporate level is not something I look forward to.

Source: ghostcrawler A secondary concern is making sure they don't feel too similar.

This is the other line that bothers me. The way it's fit into the paragraph is off-putting, since it appears to be dangling there as something separate of the rest of the post.

If this is taken to mean that you want a different playstyle, I'm not sure what the purpose is in ensuring that. If tanks are meant to be normalized and tanks are meant to be fun, the way they feel shouldn't be a priority.

That's not to say that classes shouldn't be distinct or have their own flavor. However, I'm specifically keeping in mind my Protection Warrior and my (still-leveling) Feral Druid when I bring this up. The fact that they play similarly and use similar cooldowns has never bothered me. For the many tanks who don't roll a tank alt, I can't imagine they'd be bothered if another class plays like them.

What it comes down to is balance. If, in fact, the goal is to make sure that Feral Druids play in a much more distinct way from Protection Warriors than they currently do, or to make sure that all tanks play differently from each other, that is not a bad goal in itself. However, disparate abilities do make it harder to balance the game. As we saw with Druid strengths at TBC launch, and now with Druid weaknesses at TBC endgame (flame retardant: I'm not referring to Druids being poor tanks, but rather to the inability to scale gear past the armor cap, etc.), balancing between similar classes hasn't even gone that well.


Pardon the length of this. My concern is that the focus is more on the philosophy rather than the implementation.

[veneretio]

The biggest thing they need to do to get guilds using all types of tanks is to get rid of this Main Tank idea completely. They need to stop making any content short of 5 mans solo tankable. So in other words, all of Hyjal is completely unacceptable raid content if they want a cultural change.

[Kazeyonoma]

Agreed. The fact they want 1 tank for 10 mans, and 3 tanks for 25 mans is a problem. If they really wanted to help break the stigma they would have 2 tanks for 10 mans and 4-5 tanks for 25 mans. Make fights less about bringing 1 extra healer or 1 extra dps, and more about control, coordinated efforts, and less about "lawlz stay out of t3h fire".

[Kavtor]

I think you might be reading too much into it. They can't very well work on balancing content until the content has been created. They're still doing passes on many of the classes, and passes on raid buffs, and the raid content isn't complete.

There's really no sense spending effort on fine tuning L80 class balance when the content and classes can see large changes still. It's unfortunate, but it just can't be a priority.

And I can't see blizzard having the intention of nerfing warriors to the point where other classes are clearly superior, just to change the culture of the game. He's gone to great lengths to post left, right, and center such that all classes should be reasonably effective. It doesn't make good sense to aggravate the long time warrior tanks. Especially after the state of warrior tanks early in TBC. No reason to make the same mistake twice. As TBC showed, there'll be enough turmoil in the ranks of raiding guilds to present new opportunities for many people.

I also think the concerns of the number of tanks is a bit overblown. While I think there are advantages to increasing the number of tanks in some encounters for the sake of variety, so long as they intend that all specs of most of the tank classes can tank well, that it isn't a problem.

As you go from the 1/5, 2/10 to 3/25 mentality you've also got cat druids, DPS warriors, and DPS Death Knights that can tank 5 mans, and fill other rolls in 25's. By making the other specs more viable as tanks, that problem should be largely solved.

I think it'll be interesting to see how they'll balance tanks who aren't tanking in terms of progression raiding. When learning Hyjal, it wasn't a big deal for me to throw on DPS gear as one of 3-4 tanks, and still contribute reasonable DPS. But in sunwell, extra tanks swap out. (assuming they haven't top flight fury gear and respec) I'm envisioning future Brutallus style encounters retaining that model, unless tanks get some really clever mechanics. That, or they redesign all of the tanking trees to resemble the death knight philosophy. It'll be interesting to see where that break point is.

[relgatta]

Your point brushes against a concern I have had for some time with regard to Blizz trying to change culture with in game mechanics.

Specifically the “tank shortage.”

Blizz has stated in quote 2 of Cider’s post that they are trying to make tanking “more fun” or in quote 5 to make more types of tanks “viable” seemingly to lure more tanks in to the open to fill this shortage.

I am not an opponent of fun, or tank diversity by any means. My concern however is that tanking is already fun. It is my favorite part of the game, the problem of tank shortages that Blizz seems to be trying to address is a result of culture. I don’t think that specifically there is a tank shortage. I have more tanks of all flavors in my guild than we can jam in to a raid. Yet the trade channel is constantly filled with “lf tank for Heroic X” or “lf geared tank for ZA pug” or whatever.

The problem is that tanking for a pug typically is not fun. I haven’t tanked in a pug since the launch of the burning crusade, I leveled protection through the old game and pugged my way to starter gear. When TBC came around I was in a guild situation where pugs were no longer necessary. I think many tanks find themselves in a similar situation.

I doubt that any change they could make to tanking that would still allow tanking to be “fun” could alter the pug enough to make it worth my time.

In short, Blizz seems to think that what isn’t fun about being a tank is the tanking, rather than the pugging.

Blizz probably can increase the number of tanks available to pugs and thus reduce the “tank shortage” but only by dumbing down tanking to the point that it loses much of what makes it challenging and entertaining.

Long way of saying “here here, don’t change game mechanics to address a culture issue.”

[Ukk]

Vene and Kaz hit it on the head. Our guild has too many tanks for raids, and not enough tanks for heroics. I cannot come up with a single justification to stray very far from the 1:1:3 ratio of tank:healer:dps for ALL levels of content. Otherwise someone is left out of raids, or someone is unable to get a group for heroics.

[Eduardo]

I would tend to agree. Tanking is not boring to me but tanking in a PUG is horrible. There is no cure for this to me.

[Painapple]

Source: relgatta Your point brushes against a concern I have had for some time with regard to Blizz trying to change culture with in game mechanics. Specifically the “tank shortage.” Blizz has stated in quote 2 of Cider’s post that they are trying to make tanking “more fun” or in quote 5 to make more types of tanks “viable” seemingly to lure more tanks in to the open to fill this shortage. I am not an opponent of fun, or tank diversity by any means. My concern however is that tanking is already fun. It is my favorite part of the game, the problem of tank shortages that Blizz seems to be trying to address is a result of culture. I don’t think that specifically there is a tank shortage. I have more tanks of all flavors in my guild than we can jam in to a raid. Yet the trade channel is constantly filled with “lf tank for Heroic X” or “lf geared tank for ZA pug” or whatever. The problem is that tanking for a pug typically is not fun. I haven’t tanked in a pug since the launch of the burning crusade, I leveled protection through the old game and pugged my way to starter gear. When TBC came around I was in a guild situation where pugs were no longer necessary. I think many tanks find themselves in a similar situation. I doubt that any change they could make to tanking that would still allow tanking to be “fun” could alter the pug enough to make it worth my time. In short, Blizz seems to think that what isn’t fun about being a tank is the tanking, rather than the pugging. Blizz probably can increase the number of tanks available to pugs and thus reduce the “tank shortage” but only by dumbing down tanking to the point that it loses much of what makes it challenging and entertaining. Long way of saying “here here, don’t change game mechanics to address a culture issue.”

Indeed.

[khelben]

The part where Ghostcrawler says " we want to make tanking more fun" blows my mind...tanking IS fun. That's the reason I do it anyway. I enjoy the challenge of controlling chaos.

I'm unsure on HOW WotLK will really affect me as a protection warrior until I see the final product. I've checked out most of the "in-development" info on wotlkwiki.info and some of the things I've seen are "interesting" changes and IF they make it into the final product will be fun learning HOW to use effectively.

I do agree with Cider's assessment of Blizzard needing to work on balancing it properly so that some tanks are not favoured over other tanks (and yes I know Ghostcrawler said as much but he has it as 7th on a long "to-do" list).

[Legionodeath]

Bah... I really disagree with making the classes the same. I feel that all 3 current classes have their strengths and weaknesses. Guilds use these to play the game, to progress.

A lot of the focus it seems is on Feral Druids and making them more raid-friendly in an MT role. That is a great goal, as I love druids. Theyre a great class and good tanks overall. Improvements are needed to make these a more viable all around tank.

However the fact theyre making all the classes 'the same', without being 'the same', isnt a good idea. The 3 current classes use their strengths to shine in their roles as tanks. They all do very well at what they do. Why change it if it isnt broken?

[Ilya M]

Because in some respects, it is broken and crawler has a good point about guilds not being stonewalled in progression due to not having a specific tanking class. Tanking adds on Morogrim as a warrior tank is the kind of thing that gives you a massive headache and induces carpal tunnel. bring a pally and its easy moded so fast its a damned joke(the add controll part) I'm glad to see that i'll no long be the terribad aoe tank, i'll just be the "not as good as a pally but we can live with this tank" and shockwave(being 1 button) won't induce as much hand pain.

[Jasra]

Source: Ciderhelm Promoting equal opportunity among the classes is good -- it's one of the things we do at TankSpot. But a decision to change a cultural perspective on a corporate level is not something I look forward to.

Very well said - this captures a bit of the unease I feel about the situation. Even though "the monopoly" hasn't really existed since TBC, after toying with the beta you can't help but feel like that in the greater equation of balance, perhaps the devs are putting those cultural issues onto the table, which I would presume all but the most uncharitable out there would agree is a bridge too far.

[Kazeyonoma]

I think it is something to be repeated again in case the Blizzard devs ever stumble across this thread is that like the other posters mentioned: "Tanking is fun... It is EXTREMELY fun".

That isn't the problem. If tanking wasn't FUN we wouldn't have druid and paladins fighting for spots so badly, it is in every essence of the meaning, FUN. Having control, challenging yourself to threat races, surviving bosses, being THE person who has to control the situation, being on the brink of death any given second, working on our perfect rotation, all the while trying to improve our gear and which gear to wear for which fight as well as improving our own personal skill. THIS is fun. THIS is what drives tanks to continue doing what they do best.

The thing that ISN'T fun, is exactly the problem Blizzard is trying to address. The CULTURE. The Culture of PUGS is what is causing "tank shortages." No raiding guild has "Tank Shortages" except during big guild splits. Shortages occur because Raid level tanks, don't want to waste time, effort, energy, or just the breathe to have to deal with the nature, immaturity, and just overall disrespect that lots of players get when they do heroics or 5mans with pugs.

You'll notice tanks log on everyday to farm consumables, do dailies, do their raids, some pvp, and some even do 5 mans with guildies. They play because they love it. They won't, however, waste 2+ hours (heroics take this long when pugs go wrong) to do a pug only to be blamed by someone who doesn't understand their class or how threat works or how a pull works or how to cc or how basically to PLAY. This makes it not fun to do them.

I'll admit I've tanked less and less as of lately because of my schedule and my play availability, but I have respec'd to prot for the occasional 10 man, and every time I do it, I get excited. I don't respec back to pvp spec for as long as I can possibly wait because I WANT to tank. It's exhilarating back in the front seat tanking down the bosses, leading raids, even if its farm raids, kara, za, or t5, it's FUN. But every time I am caught sitting around and someone says, wanna tank this pug and I agree (although hesitantly), ventrilo becomes a 2 hour rant of me complaining about the pug. How x dps couldn't control his threat on the 3rd add, or how y dps couldn't cc away from me so I can thunder clap, or how the healer was spamming healing touch instead of lifebloom, or the priest who insisted on fear bombing every 30 seconds as "cc".

Seriously, I've tanked both Karazhan and Zul'Aman semi pugs in the past month at least twice each, and they were fun, I had a good time, then I went to do Magister's Terrace each time as well, 4 times total. And all 4 times, I wiped so many times I had full repair bills (prot gear broken from failures on boss 2 and Kael'thas, and pvp gear broken from 8+ wipes on Delrissa). In a 5 man heroic. This disheartens tanks from wanting to group in 5 mans, not the instance or the tanking itself, but the players they have to deal with. Can blizzard do anything about this? Probably not, but I guess giving a level 55 tank to every class means at least a lot more people will have the option to say "I'll tank this on my Dk, lemme relog" and help it out, but even those people will soon find tanking a chore in pugs, or the dps will simply think DKs can't tank because the player (not the class) may not be well versed in tanking.

[Klimpen]

Personally I see the 'homogenization' more as increasing the baseline of tanks. Note that strengths are preserved, but the difference between being good and able is reduced.

Playstyle, the thing that really makes classes unique, will be preserved.

Thus I don't think anyone really has anything to be worried about.

[Ringthane]

Source: Kavtor I think you might be reading too much into it. They can't very well work on balancing content until the content has been created. They're still doing passes on many of the classes, and passes on raid buffs, and the raid content isn't complete.

I tend to agree. I'd rather have them get everything developed, and then worry about balancing. That's been the problem for a long time now - they put a bunch of changes in a patch, and then everything gets unbalanced again, and then they put out another patch that changes something else, and then they have to go and balance that, and so on, and on, and on, and on.

I'd rather see them worry about balance once they have the stuff ready to be balanced, than making changes here to fix this, which in turn upsets that, which in turn throws off the other, which...

That's why it's still beta. Give them time.

[Urhan]

How much time do we give them, though? The best guess right now appears to be a November release. Before Christmas, at any rate. So there are maybe two months, three tops, left for getting things balanced. Meanwhile, the beta hasn't even seen a raid instance yet. That doesn't leave me too optimistic about Blizzard being able to get everything fine-tuned in time, barring a delay in the release.

[Ringthane]

Source: Urhan How much time do we give them, though? The best guess right now appears to be a November release. Before Christmas, at any rate. So there are maybe two months, three tops, left for getting things balanced. Meanwhile, the beta hasn't even seen a raid instance yet. That doesn't leave me too optimistic about Blizzard being able to get everything fine-tuned in time, barring a delay in the release.

Well, they've had about four years to get it right, and they haven't yet, so...

[jere]

Some more from that thread:

So if Warriors are the best tanks for "bosses who hit hard for physical damage" (i.e., with the exception of elementals [where druids/pallies have no edge] and casters [again, no edge, although DKs have one], pretty much every encounter where the tank matters much), why not choose a warrior for every difficult encounter?

We've talked about this a lot, and I'll admit that it may not be the best way to go (designing tanks for certain bosses). Currently we are talking more about HOW classes tank, not WHAT they tank. Potential examples: The warrior tanks by having a shield, a lot of mitigation and avoidance. The druid tanks by having a huge health pool. The paladin tanks by using passive reactive abilities. That is a gross simplification, but perhaps you get the idea. This would naturally lead to some tanks being better at some fights, but it should leave more flexibility to the individual. Players won't count up all the bosses and say "Only 4 hit for magic damage, so we don't need a death knight."

I don't think this is too off topic, as it mainly concerns tanks - is there any thought going into rage generation (and to a lesser extent, heals = mana generation for paladins) through damage-mitigation shields (Power Word: Shield and so on)? I ask this because it seems like Discipline Priests are going to be one of the strongest single-target healers BECAUSE of all these shields, yet many tanks refuse or dislike to be shielded unless in an emergency situation because as said, they don't gain rage through shield spells (and paladins getting shielded instead of healed don't regen mana).

Yes, that is something we talk about. The design for the Discipline priest in PvE is using shields and similar damage prevention techniques and it sucks (and is unintuitive) that those are bad to use on warrior and bear tanks.

Given those niches, and this comment in your OP, "If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed. " I think you are setting yourself up for failure. The problem is, niche number one, is not a niche, it is pretty much the definition of being an MT. Something you yourself somewhat admitted to by referring to that niche as being the majority of encounters in a post on the warrior forums. If the game is being designed that way, and even worse, blizzard posters are saying that, then why would the community choose a non warrior tank?

You shouldn't feel like you need a warrior. I wrote some of those comments trying to reassure warriors that the changes they saw weren't an attempt (on purpose or accidentally) to phase them out of being awesome tanks. But in retrospect I see my comments were a little misleading and just made non-warriors more concerned. Making all tanks viable needs to come first, and the flavor / niches (while still important) need to be second.

[Lore]

qq ciderhelm!

On a more serious note, regarding "making tanking more fun", the problem is that people like us who enjoy tanking are few and far between. There's very little draw of the same sort that DPS'ers or even healers enjoy; we either succeed or fail, with very little doing "better than last time." We also have no competition in our task against other people in the raid, since generally speaking, if we're tanking something, no one else is. Putting tanks on the DPS charts is an excellent step. Giving tanks (including Warriors, who still seem to avoid the "Hybrid" label) more capabilities when not tanking is an excellent move as well. Not only does it give us more to do, but perhaps more importantly, it makes the indication between a good tank and a bad tank that much more clear across all levels of progression.

Really though, I think you're just worrying too much. It seems very clear that this was simply a message to state the developers' current priorities at this stage of beta, and not as a "State of the Union" address to let all tanks know exactly how things are going to be at 80.

[Boozefighter]

I think Kaz nailed it on the head, the difference between "The Tank" and "A Tank" is the key, not making tanking "fun". I also posted on the Beta forums about this there is not talents or specs for responsibility, knowledge, and awareness. All of these items are required to be "The Tank".