Quel-Delar: No tank version?

Trouble is, there are more tanks required for 5 mans than for raids. So a good portion of tanks won't see a raid because there isn't that much demand.
Yet tank itemization from 5mans is frankly apalling. The shield drop/craftable is 20-30 ilvls behind at the moment. There is a new one in the new non-hero 5man. I do see an issue here when all the raid geared DPS find that their 5man tanks can't hold aggro against them.

So yes, this thing is very short-sighted. A stats stick for hunters is there but no tanking one hander? No tanking shield in the heroic version of 3 5mans? How is that supposed to be good? I can forsee that I will run into serious threat problems. Yet there drop two tanking one handers from the 5man heroics. They will get disenchanted. A lot. Moving stuff like this into the questline would also have helped to unclutter the loot tables.

I have two tanking specs. Now what am I supposed to do with a twohander? It's not like I can devastate or shield slam with that.

^ Interesting. I didn't even think to look at it that way. You're right though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TomHuxley

Let's see...because there has never, EVER been an epic endgame questline with the rewards done like this before?

---

I'm just gonna reply to this specific statement and say:

Quests - World of Warcraft

Lots of raid quests where not every class/spec will find something useful.
Oh, and head of onyxia is not included there, should ask Feral tanks what they want as a reward there, or maybe any mail/plate caster? or Plate DPS?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nessin

My arrogance? Oh, I'll admit I'm arrogant, but regardless of what YOU want, Blizzard has actually came out (as part of this incident) and stated that they aren't in the business of providing gear to every single spec and class combo with regards to quest rewards. Its disturbing that you think that, considering there are pieces you can't get via questing at all in WotLK (notably, a tank trinket).

---

See, here's the problem I have with that statement, and Bomark's reply in general. They are already doing just that -- catering to most class/spec combos. Don't you find it slightly hypocritical that Blizzard would say "We don't feel the need to have a reward for every spec and class combination", and then immediately follow that up with "We decided to change the spell mace from MP5 to haste so as to benefit more spec / class combos."

So, going into this whole debacle, there were essentially five specs out of 30 left in the dark:

Mutilate Rogues
Prot Warriors / Paladins
Boomkin
Shadow Priests

Blizzard says, too bad, we aren't aiming to give everyone a reward. Wait, we should make a change. Here you go, Boomkin and Shadow Priests. So now you're left with two setups that do not have a reward. So if they're not going to aim to cater to everyone, why the change to cater to Boomkin and Shadow Priests?

Why are there so many 2her rewards? Why an Agi 2her designed only for hunters, and a 2h mace designed only for ferals / possibly DK tanks? Hunters could Main-Hand the 1h agi sword in a DW setup, and Druids / DKs could use a number of the other weapons.

The line "We don't intend to cater to everyone" applies when you are perhaps refering to covering 40% of class / spec combos. Maybe it can apply when you're covering 70% and leave it there. However, when you're already covering 80% of combos, and then make a change so that you're covering ~90%, it becomes harder to justify.

There are also about what, 4-5 specs that aren't catered to do PvE DPS?

By the way, just thought I'd say as a DK who likes to DW tank that you can add another spec to the list of tanks missing out on an ideal weapon. Yeah, the 1hander dps sword could work for a main hand threat stick (though without any expertise it's not even that attractive), but I'm finding attaining a good tank-sword difficult (yay rng!) and was really looking forward to a "guaranteed" one from this quest line.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gendrake

By the way, just thought I'd say as a DK who likes to DW tank that you can add another spec to the list of tanks missing out on an ideal weapon. Yeah, the 1hander dps sword could work for a main hand threat stick (though without any expertise it's not even that attractive), but I'm finding attaining a good tank-sword difficult (yay rng!) and was really looking forward to a "guaranteed" one from this quest line.

---

Well, as far as one handed tanking weapons go the first boss in ICC 10 man drops one so it'll be pretty easy to get one anyway.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xianth

Well, as far as one handed tanking weapons go the first boss in ICC 10 man drops one so it'll be pretty easy to get one anyway.

---

...if you are a tank that isn't restricted to 5mans for whatever reason. Run a 5 man PUG and take a look at what the tanks have.
You'll see the turkey carver and the craftable/CoT shield. A lot. Coupled with iLVL 226/332 gear obtained by badges. Since these tanks only get 332 gear by doing daily heroics and the odd Archavon/Onyxia PUG it is time to break out an extra portion of respect because these people worked really hard for their gear. On a daily basis.

There are only oh so many tanks required in raids. You need quite a bit more for 5mans. Many aspiring tanks simply gave up because they had no chance of getting a tanking raidslot. Many are twinks. If you keep your equipment up to scratch with 2 pieces T8 and 2 pieces T9 on a twink without any raiding then you show real commitment.

10mans are NOT easily attainable. My warrior for instance neither has the gear nor the experience to raid DPS hoping to pick up whatever tanking leftovers. I wouldn't have the time to find a second raid since my main commitment is my priest. Quel'delar and a nice tanking shield in the 5man heroics would have been a godsend. Now I don't know if I'll pull the threat values overgeared DPS does.

Just remember this when you are one tank shy of a 5man heroics run.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Maèl

...if you are a tank that isn't restricted to 5mans for whatever reason. Run a 5 man PUG and take a look at what the tanks have.
You'll see the turkey carver and the craftable/CoT shield. A lot. Coupled with iLVL 226/332 gear obtained by badges. Since these tanks only get 332 gear by doing daily heroics and the odd Archavon/Onyxia PUG it is time to break out an extra portion of respect because these people worked really hard for their gear. On a daily basis.

There are only oh so many tanks required in raids. You need quite a bit more for 5mans. Many aspiring tanks simply gave up because they had no chance of getting a tanking raidslot. Many are twinks. If you keep your equipment up to scratch with 2 pieces T8 and 2 pieces T9 on a twink without any raiding then you show real commitment.

10mans are NOT easily attainable. My warrior for instance neither has the gear nor the experience to raid DPS hoping to pick up whatever tanking leftovers. I wouldn't have the time to find a second raid since my main commitment is my priest. Quel'delar and a nice tanking shield in the 5man heroics would have been a godsend. Now I don't know if I'll pull the threat values overgeared DPS does.

Just remember this when you are one tank shy of a 5man heroics run.

---

For starters there is both a shield and weapon dropping in the new 5 man and I'm not too sure about saying 10 man are not attainable A 5 man needs one tank one healer, a 10 man toc needs 2 tanks two healers. That's just two heroic groups lumped together and takes about as much time as two heroics.

Of course, ICC won't be the same deal but marrowgar is one of the daily raid quests so there will be millions of people forming 10 man pugs just to kill him anyway. Secondly, an axe drops in the new 5 man too.

Oh, and generating good threat has very little to do with having a high dps weapon.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WarTotem

I'm just gonna reply to this specific statement and say:

Quests - World of Warcraft

Lots of raid quests where not every class/spec will find something useful.
Oh, and head of onyxia is not included there, should ask Feral tanks what they want as a reward there, or maybe any mail/plate caster? or Plate DPS?

---

Again, this was my point. Read through the quests you linked to on wowhead, none of these covered 90-95% of PVE specs. The best ones covered a couple, the intermediate ones covered maybe a third or so. Generally, the better the rewards level the narrower the scope of specs has been (up to legendaries, which sometimes have only benefitted one or two classes (e.g. the legendary bow from SWP).

Maybe some of you are having trouble with the important shades of gray here, but there's a huge difference between having a quest (and a raid quest at that) that rewards 30% of PVE specs (leaving the majority of players waiting for the next one) or one that rewards 90% of the specs, including ones that are in direct competition for raid slots.

It's this shifting of the rewards to be almost all inclusive but not quite that creates the problems. If the rewards really were just for DPS specs (very easy to do) or just for healers, or just for tanks, or just for frost mages, or whatever, it would be fine. No one would be complaining.

If the developers had even come out with a reasonable answer as to why they designed it this way perhaps the outrage would have been limited to people who just want their leet lootz. But they didn't, they sat there with a straight face and said it was for DPS (when it could have been but instead they provided generalized weapons that benefit healers and half the tanks), they said there were plenty of "other options" when there is no other way to get equivalent weapons for anyone but hardcore 25 man raiders prior to ICC, and they said they didn't feel it necessary to cover all specs while hurriedly altering one of the caster weapons to include more specs (and even benefitting some healers more).

It was a poor decision from the get-go to decide to cover so may PVE specs while excluding so few, and negative reactions to the bad quest rewards design was made worse by providing disingenuous responses that either miss the point entirely or are blatantly false (and sometimes contradict their own actions). The people getting shafted on this have every right to be upset, and should continue to voice their objections to either fix this before it goes live, or make it obvious that this will not be a design that is tolerated in future epic quest lines.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xianth

For starters there is both a shield and weapon dropping in the new 5 man...

---

Which would be relevant if the quest line weapons were the same level as the new 5 mans. Since instead they are higher, it's like saying it doesn't matter because people can run CoS and get the ilvl 200 shield.

Quote:

---

Oh, and generating good threat has very little to do with having a high dps weapon.

---

If you are pressing the wrong buttons, or don't know how to stack your stats for high agro situations, then I agree that improving your gameplay yields a much larger benefit than a weapon upgrade. Oh, BTW this is equally true for DPS. Knowing your rotation and how to gear will benefit you far more than upgrading your weapon.

And if you ARE already gearing and using the appropriate threat rotation/priority then whether you like it or not upgrading your weapon is the most significant way to improve your threat, as simply adding a few extra points of strength on a new chest is not going to have nearly the benefit of getting a higher DPS range on your new weapon.

What I don't understand is why people are opposed to Blizzard dropping a tanking mace or sword into the quest rewards. It's not as though they would have to get rid of one of the existing rewards to do so. The only thing adding a tank reward would do is give more tanks good gear, which is never a bad thing in my opinion.

Quote:

---

What I don't understand is why people are opposed to Blizzard dropping a tanking mace or sword into the quest rewards.

---

To be fair, I haven't seen anyone say that they are opposed to a tanking weapon, just that it's not necessary. Frankly, if you have been running 5 and 10 man content (especially in PuGs), tank weapons have always been hard to come by. If you are still raiding heroics or old ten mans (time issues or leveling an alt) then the current weapons should be fine for that.

I agree that it would have been easy to add a tank weapon and I understand TomHuxley's point about 30% vs. 90%. In other words, I strongly sympathize with the Want argument, but haven't yet seen a good Need argument.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bladesong

I agree that it would have been easy to add a tank weapon and I understand TomHuxley's point about 30% vs. 90%. In other words, I strongly sympathize with the Want argument, but haven't yet seen a good Need argument.

---

That's just silly... By that logic we should be yelling at Blizzard to get rid of all the QD quest rewards because no one "needs" them. I would argue that tanks "need" more options to upgrade their weapons than dps classes do. Here are a few quick links to show how wide the gap is.

Level 80 epic weapons with defense = 21
Level 80 epic weapons without defense = 516

*Edit* Fixed the links... html is hard. :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bladesong

I agree that it would have been easy to add a tank weapon and I understand TomHuxley's point about 30% vs. 90%. In other words, I strongly sympathize with the Want argument, but haven't yet seen a good Need argument.

---

Ok, I will agree with bladesong in that they hyperbole flies a bit (not excluding myself) when using terms like "need". But I also agree that really none of us "need" any of this. As the guild who down'd yogg in ilvl 200 blues show, with skill and practice we could do a lot more content than most of us do with lesser gear.

That said, gear is the carrot on the other side of the "wiping sucks" stick to succeed, and is part of what is "fun" for many (I would assume most) players. Rewards are a necessary part of this fun, so it still seems like poor design that needs to be changed. Furthermore, the high degree of specs that can be rewarded makes this feel exclusionary...that probably isn't the intent, but it's pretty much unavoidable when 90%+ of the specs out there can get rewarded. And from a gameplay/design point of view, if the developers don't realize this than they "need" to be informed of it, as it's going to hamper future attempts and will generally lead to better quest designs in the future.

Quote:

---

That's just silly... By that logic we should be yelling at Blizzard to get rid of all the quest rewards because no one "needs" them. I would argue that tanks "need" more weapon upgrade options while dps do not "need" still more weapon options.

---

Actually, your comment is silly :p. I clearly stated that I strongly sympathize with wanting to add a tank weapon to the quest line (my alt warrior tank still has Peacekeeper Blade), nowhere did I state that dps "needed" another weapon and you are engaging in a bit of hyperbole with your remark about removing all quest rewards.

I think my disconnect on this whole discussion is that I don't see anything wrong with saying "I would like "X" because it would be cool" and so I don't see why people feel that they have to turn it into some dire need in order for it to be a legitimate request.

@ TomHuxley - I love getting new loot, I think that Pally/Warrior weapons have been hard to come by for the whole expansion and I think it's vital that we give feedback to the devs. My point is that I think we have a better chance of getting what we want if we are honest about why we want it and friendly when we give feedback. It will help to separate us from the angry hordes on the wow forums :D

I do agree that adding in a tanking weapon (preferably Axe, for my Orc Warrior :P) could be ... useful for lack of better description, but it is neither really needed, nor useless. Yay for shades of grey!!
My previous statement was only to show that they HAVE done questlines similar to this where not every class/spec received something useful, as opposed to what TomHuxley seemed to imply in the part I quoted.

In the end, we can live without, although it would've been a nice jest towards tanks, especially since people making statements like "people wouldn't notice it if you swapped to a DPS weapon" just make me wonna grab that DPS weapon and do nasty things with it involving that persons face. Oh, and as a Healer I WILL notice if you swap to your Berserking enchanted 0 Stamina weapon, just so you know :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bladesong

I think that Pally/Warrior weapons have been hard to come by for the whole expansion and I think it's vital that we give feedback to the devs. My point is that I think we have a better chance of getting what we want if we are honest about why we want it and friendly when we give feedback. It will help to separate us from the angry hordes on the wow forums :D

---

Indeed, using thunderclud's wowhead numbers then tank 1Hs make up 3.4% of level 80 epic weapons. Since prot pallies and warriors are 2/30 (6.67%) of the specs, that seems a bit low. There may be other ways to look at it (i.e. if you're the tank in a guild run then it will only be rolled on by tanks) but even then, tanks make up 20% (ten mans) or 12% (25 mans) of a normal raid. Now...that 3.4% also includes crafteds and other drops, so I don't pretend to know what the best way to balance this would be (and it would matter more at a per-tier point than the aggregate number of all level 80 weapons) but at least on first blush the numbers seem to support the fact that tank weapons are not terribly common.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TomHuxley

Indeed, using thunderclud's wowhead numbers then tank 1Hs make up 3.4% of level 80 epic weapons. Since prot pallies and warriors are 2/30 (6.67%) of the specs, that seems a bit low. There may be other ways to look at it (i.e. if you're the tank in a guild run then it will only be rolled on by tanks) but even then, tanks make up 20% (ten mans) or 12% (25 mans) of a normal raid. Now...that 3.4% also includes crafteds and other drops, so I don't pretend to know what the best way to balance this would be (and it would matter more at a per-tier point than the aggregate number of all level 80 weapons) but at least on first blush the numbers seem to support the fact that tank weapons are not terribly common.

---

by the way tom did you get banned today your thread is gone wondering since I got a one week ban slapped on me for posting in one of the more recent qd threads today apparently the general trolling population doesn't like logic

Not only did I not get a ban, I just posted again in the thread moments ago (because it doesn't have ongoing flaming it slips off the front page more often...and I don't post again unless there is something worth responding to).

I didn't see the threads that got deleted/banned, so I can't comment on the differences, but I've been very careful not to exceed the posting rules and to not respond to flame bait. I'm not trying to imply you did, I simply didn't see what caused it so I can't have an opinion.