Possible 4.3 Threat Changes

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3300854

Massive wall-of-text about changes to one of the most fundamental aspects of tanking - threat. Here's a brief statement from the post that summarizes the actual changes:

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Upcoming changes

Here are the specific changes you’re likely to see:

Hotfix: The threat generated by classes in their tanking mode has been increased from three times damage done to five times damage done.
In an upcoming patch: Vengeance no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken generates Vengeance equal to one third of the damage dealt by that attack. As Vengeance updates during the fight, it is always set to at least a third of the damage taken in the last two seconds. It still climbs from that point at the previous rate, still decays at the previous rate, and still cannot exceed the current maximum.

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That will certainly make establishing agro at the start of the fight or after a tank swap a bit smoother.

I'm trying to figure out what I think about all this... to me this is a HUGE change to the most fundamental aspect of the role I've played for my entire WoW career and I'm not sure I'm a fan of the change. Making threat a non-issue removes one of the ways that a tank can improve their performance and the performance of the whole raid (by not throttling the dps). Making threat a non-issue also removes a way that a superior tank can set themselves apart from the rest, in the same way that a dps'er can look at damage meters to measure their performance.

It might be good for the game overall, especially with the LFG groups and the gear disparity that exists there, but for the raiding scene I'm not sure if I like it...

more on this later.

I couldn't believe what I was reading, I thought I was reading too much into it until he actually said "We have therefore decided to buff tank threat generation in a hotfix this week to where it’s generally not a major consideration."

This is astounding and I'm looking forward to this PTR. I wonder how they're going to change our abilities to fall in line with the gameplay changes GC hinted at. More active defensive abilities? Sounds pretty frickin' cool to me.

In a raid setting, I do not usually have agro issues. It's those times that I taunt off my co-tank that I worry about in a raid setting. Obviously, it works in reverse when he taunts off me I have to slow down, to give him time to get his veng. up. What I like the most is this will make it easyier to tank pug's and not have to worry about some goofball not attacking the skull. It will just make my life easier.

I think a good tank will still stand out from the bad ones. I can understand your point but I think I am a great tank, I have a good rotation/use of skills at the right time. But still at times agro can go bad and it's just a frustrating thing to happen.

so whatever happened to the whole "threat should matter" or whatever they had a long time ago where they wiped threat from tanking abilities and stuff

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Originally Posted by PimpJuice4

so whatever happened to the whole "threat should matter" or whatever they had a long time ago where they wiped threat from tanking abilities and stuff

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They gave tanks the bonus for running 5-mans and all kinds of crappy tanks are causing 5-mans to be worse because they can't hold agro. Or because good tanks no longer want to run them and deal with some silly DPS not killing the skull and pulling agro, causing them to deal with stuff they shouldn't need to.

so.... the only hard role will be healing....

panda/epic/carebears for everyone.

so basically


"call to arms has failed us guys,lets conjure up another way to get people to roll tanks in heroics"


i wonder how long buffing tank threat will last before people quit tanking because there tired of the way dps and healers treat them in heroics

No I didn't mean it only applies to heroics. I mean that 5-man, groups (from my experience), if I am tanking them (and I feel like I am pretty solid at tanking), I will deal with a) bad healer, b) bad DPS not focus firing my marked target. The healer can be replaced, DPS can be replaced but a vast majority of the time DPS is the issue for me.

Conversly, when I am healing the tank will be either a) good but dealing with retarded DPS, b) bad tank, good DPS, but the tanks so bad the DPS are pulling agro off him even when they are playing correctly (dps can't wait forever).

So my thought is this helps 5-mans more then raids. Raids, I only really have an agro issue when my DPS are bored on trash and not paying attention. Or when my cotank or I taunt a boss off each other and we don't wait for vengence to stack on the other tank.

Well....that's an interesting change. o.O Not sure how I even like this. It's uhm...making tanking a lil easier for sure...

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Originally Posted by Pruke

No I didn't mean it only applies to heroics. I mean that 5-man, groups (from my experience), if I am tanking them (and I feel like I am pretty solid at tanking), I will deal with a) bad healer, b) bad DPS not focus firing my marked target. The healer can be replaced, DPS can be replaced but a vast majority of the time DPS is the issue for me.

Conversly, when I am healing the tank will be either a) good but dealing with retarded DPS, b) bad tank, good DPS, but the tanks so bad the DPS are pulling agro off him even when they are playing correctly (dps can't wait forever).

So my thought is this helps 5-mans more then raids. Raids, I only really have an agro issue when my DPS are bored on trash and not paying attention. Or when my cotank or I taunt a boss off each other and we don't wait for vengence to stack on the other tank.

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I have to agree with Pruke. Lets face it, threat is a non-issue in raids a minute into the fight after the tank has build up vengeance. DPS in raids know this and are discipline enough to hold back. This really makes life easier for random pugs where we, as tanks, deal the bad dps. I personally stop using LFG because of stupid dps pulling agro and then bitching about it. Now I only do random with guildies and never have a problem. Maybe this will let me start using the LFG tool once more for random heroics.

Increasing threat by 2/5 is pretty *hum* astounishing.

Vengeance: instead of getting 5% attackpower every other hit we are capped in raid content in just one 60k hit? And decay/gain is at the same rate thus if i dodge twice in a row i'm sitting at minimum vengeance? That sounds pretty clunky for avoidance tanks (hello 50% dodge druids).

It probably is not much more than just a way to compensate for an increase in DPS and / or some game mechanics. Not very surprising that tanks would be falling a little behind by the third patch of an expansion.

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Originally Posted by Pruke

They gave tanks the bonus for running 5-mans and all kinds of crappy tanks are causing 5-mans to be worse because they can't hold agro. Or because good tanks no longer want to run them and deal with some silly DPS not killing the skull and pulling agro, causing them to deal with stuff they shouldn't need to.

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That makes total sense. I have been tanking for a few months now on my Feral Druid, and I can't stand people who haven't figured out what the kill priority is. Even if you are marking targets, they go for the one without the mark. This should be good, although i do agree it will make tanking so easy that it may diminish the difference between a good and bad. Although, you can still tell if they gem Stam only.....

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Originally Posted by Meshuggah

That makes total sense. I have been tanking for a few months now on my Feral Druid, and I can't stand people who haven't figured out what the kill priority is. Even if you are marking targets, they go for the one without the mark. This should be good, although i do agree it will make tanking so easy that it may diminish the difference between a good and bad. Although, you can still tell if they gem Stam only.....

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theres just as many bad tanks in heroics as there is dps.plus,you can carry a bad dps,you cant carry a bad tank


although,druid tanks were pretty crappy before they lowered the cooldown on swipe and did some other stuff in my opinion

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Originally Posted by PimpJuice4

theres just as many bad tanks in heroics as there is dps.plus,you can carry a bad dps,you cant carry a bad tank


although,druid tanks were pretty crappy before they lowered the CD on swipe and did some other stuff in my opinion

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Yep, the ones who stam stack, don't know rotations, don't gem new gear, too lazy to get rep, reforge spirit instead of dodge. Sadly, i've seen it all.

Urg, While i agree having tank game play built around keeping Defensives up could be fun, But tbh working more like Deathstrikes isn't fun, i play a warrior becuase i like being a warrior, I like that we have toManually keep TC and Demo debuffs up, i don't want Deathstrikes.

I like the long term goal of vengeance stacking fast at low levels and slowly at high levels, the 5x damage band aid make me cringe. But as a hot fix? great so until they sort out making active defensive game play work i don't have it and i don't even have the challenge of pulling nice numbers or worrying about threat. It really make me reconsider my subscription.

When is SWTOR coming out?

But seriously... what this means is basically if you're in a decent raid group, threat will officially become irrelevent. It'll still be nice for 5mans, where the 15% buff and T13 geared toons will be pulling 40k in AoE situations mindlessly spamming 1 button... But wow. The 5x multiplier strikes me as way over the top.

*****

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We could make Shield Block cost rage

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Shield Block

I'm guessing he means cost ludicruous speed amounts of rage?

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Outside the increase to initial vengence, I don't see anything here that would actually appeal to a tank looking for a challenge. It certainly has appeal to bad tanks... but as was mentioned above, this becomes a bigger band-aid instead of learning to play.

Except of course if they make rage dependent on landing attacks instead of damage done. In which case I can see all those 'bad' tanks getting even worse.... Or everyone rolls pally with the built in Expertise.

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Overall... I think good tanks will adapt to any change. Bad tanks will still be bad, because instead of making it easier (if it's more than just the 3x to 5x +larger initial vengence) there will still be as much (or more) room to fail (if rage becomes RNG for tanks, and survability tools like SB become more rage intensive...).

So it's an entirely 'flavor' change methinks. And I'm not enjoying the first taste.

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Originally Posted by klausi

Increasing threat by 2/5 is pretty *hum* astounishing.

Vengeance: instead of getting 5% attackpower every other hit we are capped in raid content in just one 60k hit? And decay/gain is at the same rate thus if i dodge twice in a row i'm sitting at minimum vengeance? That sounds pretty clunky for avoidance tanks (hello 50% dodge druids).

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Lets see... 200k HP tank maxes out at 20k AP from Vengence. Means that if the first attack hits for 60k, they are maxed out. ... Yeah... in some raid scenarios the tank will be capped after one hit.

Doesn't vengence take 10 seconds to fall off? Or is it a 10%/s decay? I've never understood how vengence decays.