Possible 4.3 Threat Changes

Seems to me that in the case of "good" tanks, they already don't "worry" about threat. I will say this makes raiding as a tank even that much easier, I guess I won't have to pre-pot with golemblood on major domo now so my DPS doesn't have to wait 5 seconds. But what this really does is making tanking a 5 man easier for me. As it stands now I dread when I need a 5-man run to cap my weekly points only to enter and find out that the 3 DPS that are doing 20k each don't know that the skull means kill me 1st. So I have mobs all over, I can let them die if I want to take even more time to get the run done. I can drop group when they claim I suck, or I can vote kick them and hope the replacement isn't as bad as they are. In the end, it makes my 5-mans, that I don't get gear or reputation for anymore that much easier on me.

While some may like the challenge of keeping agro off of 3-DPS in a PuG 5-man because those 3-DPS suck, I personally do not.

In raids, I do have people who will ride my butt at the start if I am not doing everything right, thats fine. But it's the times I do it right and get a string of dodge/parry/miss and have either no rage, or my attacks don't land. DPS my go right past me and cause me to taunt, and yell at them in vent for not watching omen. Not a big deal, doesn't happen real often, beside it's a raid people should have to pay closer attention to things so I am 100% behind threat at the start taking some ramp up time, requiring DPS to watch their butt. In a 5-man, where if I am not with guildmates and have 4 other PuG people and the DPS are impatient or incompetent players, I would rather just not have this as a frustration. So in that light I welcome the change.

Not to mention, I think that threat in the future maybe more of an issue in raids due to DPS gearing up more and more. So they system needed a bit of work. Maybe it's just an unneeded bandade for raiding, but it's a quality of life improvement for 5-man content.

Quote:

---

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

---

10% of the current vengeance amount per second if I am not mistaken.

Did anyone else catch that the original post didn't include the hotfix notice? They hotfixed the post to include the hotfix update.

some type of in game feed back system in the stock ui I really think would help things more. Kinda like how pvp has it's scoreboard. Granted it is not an easy thing to do but I really do feel it would of been a better long term solution. Since going through the combat log to isn't an easy thing to do quickly in it's current state. Even with addons/parsers it can be a bit clunky at times.

The rest of I am not as sure if it was tuned to high or not but I will wait and see.

Quote:

---

I think that threat in the future maybe more of an issue in raids due to DPS gearing up more and more

---

that would probably only be a issue if your tanks eather.are underperforming,or your dps are stupid and blowing all there cooldowns 2 seconds after the tank pulls and doesnt even have enough time to do half his rotation on the boss

Hahaha... we recorded FJ yesterday night. Guess what our first topic is? Thanks for the thunderjack GC!

But, I'll be flat out honest. I hate it. I'm sorry but this goes way, way beyond "quality of life." This is essentially removing a mechanic. I have a crappy warrior alt tank that I actually took into 5mans with HQ raiders from my guild [as well as raids]. They did not hold back. I held aggro. Why? Because I cared to understand what the heck I was doing with warriors in regards to threat. That is a measurement of difficultly and skill. I succeeded where others have failed [as others have succeeded where I have failed]. What does it mean when you shift that line? Reduction of difficulty and reduction of required skill.

Hey, guess what, I like games that require me to put a little effort in. That's just me. I'm not everyone. Moves like this which, to quote GC, make a core gameplay element " not a major consideration" doesn't seem like the direction I want to travel down. What is the next core gameplay element that they are going to get "over the concept" of?

How about hit? Why do we have it? All the things said about threat in this blog post could be said about hit. Get rid of it. What changes? Nothing except it's one less thing you have to worry about. Heck, it's even a QoL change b/c you'll not have to worry about missing spells when you're leveling.

How about Spirit? Seems like something that could be "not a major consideration"ed out of the design. Just tie regen to INT. BOOM. One less thing to balance.

This is most likely the biggest QQ post you'll ever read from me, but this criticism isn't just for the purpose of venting [though it is partly]. It is also to step up on the soapbox for a few brief seconds and seriously ask the following questions, "Could this move be the tipping point for WoW sliding into, quite literally, faceroll?" Ok, that's a bit of a stretch, but in all seriousness. I'm not a tank. I've never had threat issues when tanking any content I've tanked, with people who far outgeared me playing roles they were comfortable with and not holding back. HOW is increasing threat FIXING the problem with a lackluster design for threat generation? Oh wait, it isn't. Instead of fixing the leak in the pipe, they said, "Screw it. *SMASH* There. Now it isn't a leaky pipe, but an indoor river! See? It's ok now to have water on your floor!"

What DOES this change do? It makes it so that folks who do not care to become community members in a freaking MMO, people who treat others they meet in RDF like they are f'ing BOTS, can basically do whatever they want and win and not learn a darn thing about the genre. No. This is not a QoL change. This is, "Hey, so we are changing the rules of the game because the players aren't following the rules and failing at our design." Well, damn. Guess what. My pawns in Chess now can teleport to anywhere on the board. Wanna play chess now?

/dropmic

Eh, Spiritus, lets face it. Threat hasn't been a genuine issue for a long time. Even as far back as TBC Blizzard has said they don't really think Threat as a mechanic is very fun, it's just kind of a necessary relic of the MMO genre. (And I agree, honestly)

Tanks have played like crappy DPS classes for a long time anyway. The entire premise of the role - soaking damage - has always been almost completely passive while the player mashes DPS rotations. Imagine if a Hunter did 95% of their DPS via autoshot and instead all their actual interaction/button pushing was focused around keeping heal-over-time effects on the group. Wouldn't that seem strange, a class whose primary focus is passive and instead spends all their actual effort on something else entirely? Well, that's how tanking has behaved for a long time.

Threat as a mechanic is necessary for WoW to work the way it does, I suppose, but it need not be the entire focus of a tank. Why not have more tank abilities that focus on mitigation and survival in the same way that a DPS class focuses on more damage?

Moving more toward tying hit/exp to survival e.g. DK Death Strike; which I personally like, makes those stats useful. Hell, as they say given the choice most tanks gravitate to survival anyway.

I think it's for the better.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spiritus

Guess what. My pawns in Chess now can teleport to anywhere on the board. Wanna place chess now?

/dropmic

---

I'm white. Checkmate. Play again?

Spiritus & Bovinity both bring up great points. I'm really torn on this because I identify with both sides.

If active, skill-dependent survival replaces threat as an indicator of how good a tank is, I think it would take a while for recognition of the new skill-set to catch on because it would be more difficult to quantify. In fact, I think it would take most tanks a while to adjust to the more active style of tanking that DK's currently utilize.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bovinity

Threat as a mechanic is necessary for WoW to work the way it does, I suppose, but it need not be the entire focus of a tank. Why not have more tank abilities that focus on mitigation and survival in the same way that a DPS class focuses on more damage?

---

We had a similar conversation a while back about something similar. I think it was about spell reflect. the idea that now with an extended cd, blizzard could in theory, make the ability actually worth somthing in pve.

the question is did they? and will they?

As of today prot warriors still have some 3-5 talent points in a tree that are basically pointless, and the ability is still worthless for a boss fight.

I don't see blizzard changing the style of tanking to revolve around mitigation. Otherwise they would have changed the prot tree at the time.


However, threat was broken and it needed this fix. tanks were basically being judged in the first 20 seconds of a fight, gearing for the first 20 seconds of the fight, specing for the first 20 seconds of the fight. That's silly.

I like the threat mechanic, but not if its only going to last 20 seconds. blizzard needed to go all in one way or the other and they went with taking threat off the table.

what I dislike is the role has been totally destroyed from what it was. the once most-fun-to-play role is now designed for any idiot to come in and play. This is going to result in more careless people taking on the role of tank and the never ending " QQ the tank" trend is only going to get worse.


sad year for tanks really. maybe next xpac

/rant (Please stay tuned after the rant for your normally scheduled coherent thoughts on the topic)

NEWS FLASH: BLIZZARD FINALLY ADDS SPECTATOR MODE TO THE GAME! Codename: TANKS!

Dps wants shorter que times

blizzard sees more people play dps than tanks

blizzard says "HERE YA GO DPS WILL THIS MAKE YOU HAPPY! O and screw you tanks, the only reason you had for playing is now gone!"

All they had to do was increase the threat modifier on all aoe abilites, make thunderclap, swipe, and what do dks and pallies use DnD and Hammer? Do damage x 1000000 = threat. PROBLEM SOLVED!

I cannot possibly create a coherent thought on this topic with how enrage I am at the moment.

Quote:

---

Tanks are busy

• I’d also argue that our encounters aren’t really boring these days. We ask tanks to do a lot -- everything from picking up adds, to moving bosses around, to staying out of fires, to providing interrupts, in addition to the classic tank roles of staying alive and generating threat.

---

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

/sigh ....

I will give you a little sneak peak from last nights recording (which finished literally 6 hours before this was posted thanks GC you couldn't have waited a week!), so here is pretty much exactly what I said last night:

Quote:

---

If there is no "stand in this and you will die" mechanic, I can go afk on a boss at 30% and not lose agro, maybe even sooner than that, threat is no longer a part of the game on boss fights

---

also

Quote:

---

IMO, threat was only an issue when you had to move. If you had to move for 6 seconds, thats 4 globals. If you only manage 1 global while you are moving because of contact time, you will lose threat. Vengeance solved that, but it took it way to far. Vengeance needs to be a stopgap that allows you to hold threat while moving and not hitting the boss for 5 seconds out of a minute, not go afk at 30% like it allows you to do now.

---

IT IS VENGEANCE THAT IS BROKEN BLIZZARD NOT THREAT! I simply cannot understand where you are trying to take your game right now. Some of the design choices you are making are clearly SCREAMING TO US! "all we want to do with WoW is make money and we no longer care about the minority" This is nothing new to those of us in top end raiding guilds, but we were the VERY VERY small minority, tanks are a major minority.

Quote:

---

Worrying about a warrior or DK (the classes with nearly non-existent threat dumps) creeping up on tank threat after several minutes will almost certainly not be an issue any longer.

---

Does this really happen!? Honestly blizzard what are you thinking? If a warrior or DK pulls off a tank 3 minutes into the fight, the tank is doing something wrong, or they have so much avoidance that they have no vengeance at all for extended periods of time. Make avoided hits count towards vengeance and undo these changes. PLEASE! I IMPLORE YOU!!!!! THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO KEEP MY ATTENTION AS A TANK ANYMORE! AT ALL! You might as well just rename the tank role "SPECTATOR/"ZOMG MOVE BEFORE YOU DIE!" CALLER"

/endrant

Now .... coherent thoughts.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS CHANGE FOR SUCH A LONG TIME! If blizzard can actually pull it off. What am I talking about? ACTIVE TAKE SURVIVAL!

Let's face it, the only tank that has that mechanic right now is the one being shunned by the top guilds. But the reason for that is because THEY ARE THE ONLY ONE!

I have been saying for years, the reason blizzard needs to make threat matter is because it is the only thing tanks have to worry about. Counting trinkets, tanks are under some sort of cooldown about 20%-30% of the time, even more with the 4pc t12 bonus. So managing cooldowns is no longer a skill. We survive damage on the whims of our healers. As long as we did not die to a "do not stand in this mechanic", we have 0 control over if we live or die. The only thing a tank lives for right now is to maintain threat.

I have been pushing for active tank survival for so long, making numerous posts during alpha asking them to give us a choice between threat and living. At the beginning of this expansion PALADINS HAD THE MOST AMAZING MODEL EVER! spend holy power on threat (shield) or on living (word of glory). I quit playing my paladin alt the day they announced the cooldown on WoG. Druids have something similiar, pulverize. To bad it turned out to be something you keep up 100% of the time and there is really no choice about it.

At the same time, as much as I want this, and blizzard wants this. They themselves in the past hold the reason as to why this method will fail. They removed crushing blows in WOTLK because shield block every 5 seconds was just to "spammy". Now maybe if we only have to hit <mangle, shield slam, crusader strike> every 20 seconds to hold threat, then the spammy concern goes out the window because it will be the only thing we are hitting instead of holding threat while spamming shield block. Actually I think this is exactly why they are making this change, because blizzard can now answer "well active tank survival is to spammy" with "you never called threat spammy when all you had to do was hold threat, it was only when you had to hold threat and hit shield block." Game design to counter forum trolls.

I do not know, I see A LOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of promise in this model, but only if all 4 tanks work the same way, not 3 passive and 1 that gets destroyed.

TLDR: THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO KEEP MY ATTENTION AS A TANK ANYMORE! AT ALL! But if blizzard can successfully make active tank survival for all classes and not be "spammy"

THIS WILL BE AN AMAZING GAME BREAKING CHANGE FOR TANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Reading the "Long-term changes" section of that watercooler I cannot help but think "THIS IS WHAT I WAS PUSHING FOR ALL DURING ALPHA AND BETA!!!! ... NOW YOU DECIDE TO DO IT!" But I have lost a lot of faith in blizzard since this expansion released, and while during alpha and beta I thought they could pull it off, I no longer believe they can.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by truculent

This is going to result in more careless people taking on the role of tank and the never ending " QQ the tank" trend is only going to get worse.

---

ironicly, the very next post proved this very point. troll qq troll qq blah...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by truculent

ironicly, the very next post proved this very point. troll qq troll qq blah...

---

If you had actually taken the time to read my post, you would have realized it was anything but ...

Answer this: Why do tanks care about threat so much:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bovinity

Imagine if a Hunter did 95% of their DPS via autoshot and instead all their actual interaction/button pushing was focused around keeping heal-over-time effects on the group. Wouldn't that seem strange, a class whose primary focus is passive and instead spends all their actual effort on something else entirely? Well, that's how tanking has behaved for a long time.

---

Answer: Because we had nothing else to care about. If we did not have to hold threat tanks would be nothing more than damage soaking bots.

If we no longer had to care about threat, blizzard can design tanks to actually care about the role they are supposed to be doing ... Mitigating as much damage as possible.

I will say this again since you ignored me the first time I said it ...

THIS IS THE BEST CHANGE EVER FOR TANKS! IT WILL MAKE TANKING SO MUCH MORE FUN! ... but only if blizzard gets it right

Quote:

---

Answer: Because we had nothing else to care about. If we did not have to hold threat tanks would be nothing more than damage soaking bots.

If we no longer had to care about threat, blizzard can design tanks to actually care about the role they are supposed to be doing ... Mitigating as much damage as possible.

I will say this again since you ignored me the first time I said it ..

---

Really? C'mon, did you not read my post?

Quote:

---

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).

---

This THIS THIS THIS THIS!!!!!!!!!!!! 1000x over THIS! Vengeance needs to count the damage you would have received from an attack you avoid.

I wish I could be constructive but yeah, I hate the hotfix, it makes me want to cry, I really like WOW, but this feels like a deal breaker. sorry blizz.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bovinity

Really? C'mon, did you not read my post?

---

Yes ... I am not really sure why you say this when ...

Quote:

---

Threat hasn't been a genuine issue for a long time. Even as far back as TBC Blizzard has said they don't really think Threat as a mechanic is very fun, it's just kind of a necessary relic of the MMO genre. (And I agree, honestly)

---

I agree with your agreement.

My point is, as was yours, our main role has always been a passive component. So in order to keep ourselves as tanks engaged in content, we have conditioned ourselves into believing that the role of the tank was to keep threat. No!, the main role of the tank is to mitigate as much damage as possible.

I have be at the forefront of pushing for a change like this since alpha, and I really hope blizzard can pull it off.

Speaking as a DPS, threat is my concern, not that of the tank. The only role who should not be mindful of threat is ideally a healer, who should be supporting the tank in their primary concern... not dying. Having tanks be threat bots just leads to them feeling like an extension of, rather than a part of, the raid team.

As DK tank in our raid group, I completely agree with the previous posts that have stated that threat is a non-issue after the first 20 seconds of a fight. The only time it's ever an issue is on fights where we have the dps prepot and lust at start, and even then, it's not a big deal. It just means I have to pay attention to omen a bit more, and potentially use a taunt if I'm in danger of slipping below a dps.

I'm guessing that Blizzard probably has multiple reasons for why they made this change.

• If threat is only an issue for the first 20 seconds out of a 7 minute fight, it's not really an interesting mechanic of the game and can be done away with.
• Quality of Life for 5 mans will increase.
• They probably see dps scaling with high-end gear such that initial threat may be more of a concern. I know that on Rhyolith, if a boomkin blows his mushrooms before I get a few ticks of dnd and/or some heart strikes in on the fragments, there's no way I'm getting threat back from him on all of them before they die. We haven't started on heroic modes yet, but we will be soon. I've heard that this is more of an issue with gear scaling in heroic modes.
• Lastly, they're probably paving the way to making tanking more about active mitigation. I'm guessing Blizzard doesn't want to make multiple radical changes to tanking mechanics all at once, so they're easing it in. If they make active mitigation for tanks other than DKs a core mechanic, they have to ease up on something else, otherwise they'll be making tanking harder than most of what current tanks want. Those tanks that chose Palys over a DK probably don't like the extra amount of work involved with maintaining both threat and active mitgation, so removing some of the threat issue will probably make the active mitigation pill easier to swallow for them.