Tanks in MoP

My pally hate started in tier 6 of BC with the ridiculous threat paladins could do to unlimited size packs of adds by just standing there. It got worse in wrath with AD when every horrible tank in the game rerolled paladin because it took almost no skill to put out the same or better tanking output as a paladin (macro'd rotation listed on the forums and AD letting paladins ignore death).

Don't get me wrong, good paladin tanks are great and my last 4-5 tanking partners in raiding have been paladins, but seeing so many horrible paladins tanks being able to skate by in BC and wrath really brought on my paladin hate. It's much better in cata though, now it's just a residual paladin hate =P

On the subject of 2 survival options to choose from talked about awhile back, that seems to be the theme for most tanks. I haven't really looked at brewmaster tanking yet, but warriors are in the same boat as paladins and druids with the "pick which of these two short resource based cooldowns you want to use".

Brew masters have several abilities to reduce damage, Guard costs 2 chi, is ~200%AP absorb shield and increases self healing by 30%, Blackout Kick provides a buff called Shuffle which increases parry chance by 30% and increases the amount of melee damage you stagger by 20%, thirdly you have purifying brew, which costs 1 chi and instantly removes your stagger dot.

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My pally hate started in tier 6 of BC with the ridiculous threat paladins could do to unlimited size packs of adds by just standing there.

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Yeah, Paladins were awesome at tanking trash...and then a boss came along and the warrior got to tank it :(

I never met a paladin (or any other for that matter) tank that used a rotation macro and was worth a damn. I hear frequently the complaint from wrath that the 969 could be macro'd but every pally I met who did that sucked. They could stand still ok but they usually lacked awareness, positioning, etc. They also were screwed when anything disrupted their flow and it was very noticable.

Can do it /= Does it well

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Originally Posted by Fetzie

Yeah, Paladins were awesome at tanking trash...and then a boss came along and the warrior got to tank it :(

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For Burning Crusade..... yeah. That is true. Since then though, pally has pretty much been the premiere tank.

Running another 5 man last night on my level 86 paladin, I pretty much had to hit ShotR every time I had 3 HP in order to stay ahead of the DPS sometimes, rather than 'time it' like the intent is supposed to be to keep the bonus shield absorber up. I had the new instance blue 1 hander equipped, a bunch of level 85s with me, and yet I was still fighting for aggro on multimobs on the Sha of Doubt fight where everyone ran in different directions for the first few seconds. I only had one taunt, and it was reserved for the healer's add. Everything was on cooldown that I could hit, and it's hella frustrating because the attacks hit for much, much, less damage than my bear attacks. Maybe I'm still getting the hang of it, but lots of grey buttons make me a sad pan--er..paladin.

Meanwhile....
I took a look at the new warrior stuff briefly last night. It's kinda weird looking - Shield Block, 60 rage, blocks_all_ incoming attacks for 6 seconds, can be used twice in 15 seconds, versus Raise Shield's 20 min rage, up to 60 rage worth of absorb physical attacks based on your AP (so it's bigger when you have Vengance running). So your choices are Big Block OR Small Block, but Small is not tied to a 60 minimum Rage entry point.

Also, Battle Stance gives you more rage when you hit things, and Berserker Stance gives you rage when you get hit or do damage. Defensive Stance adds 15% to your stam, and does the usual threat thang and makes you uncrittable.

I can see the utility in switching stances when you aren't the active tank, starting off in Berserker stance to gain initial threat if you trust your healers to be on the ball, and also, you have the Banners at 87 to do AoE taunts, which Bears and Pallies definitely lost completely.

(Admittedly, Bears get Symbiosis which lets us hijack other people's abilities -- for Warrior it's Spell Reflect, for DKs Bone Shield and for Pallies Conscecrate, traded for Enrage, Might of Ursoc (+15% max health, min 15% health), and Barkskin respectively) and Paladins get an AoE knockdown.

So, to sum up, totally non-seriously:
Pallie's new mechanic: Holy Power generation race while playing with threat issues.
Bear's new mechanic: Damn, not enough rage to use defensive abilities... must hit boss faster in order to stay alive while being cursed at by healers.
Warrior's new mechanic: Stance dance like mad, throw banners, and lots of shields!
Monk: Here! Have a statue! Have a beer! And now the Shuffle! Also, I drop healing globes!

I can't speak for DK's -- I've never played one. :)


-Tielyn

PS. Edited to add: One other thing. Pandaren can be warriors or monks, with the double stat bonuses from cooking buffs (100 extra of a stat in the new expansion) -- check out which tank classes cannot be Pandas -- Druids, Paladins, and DKs. Think we're seeing more love for Warriors and Monks this expansion for tanking?

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Originally Posted by Tielyn

Running another 5 man last night on my level 86 paladin, I pretty much had to hit ShotR every time I had 3 HP in order to stay ahead of the DPS sometimes, rather than 'time it' like the intent is supposed to be to keep the bonus shield absorber up.

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This..... sounds a LOT like a DK deathstrike type of thing. I have to ask though, how does this bonus shield play in to the pally's normal "block"? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trolling you, I'm just honestly wondering as I haven't dipped my toes into MoP yet. I mean... if you have your "normal block" PLUS this added shield absorb.... that sounds like a LOT of damage mitigation. Maybe it's a thing where, pally will be very heavy-duty on survivability.... but struggle with threat..... whereas a DK not have threat issues vice lower survivability? I would expect some kind of trade-off. I mean, I know pally's are used to having awesome survivability and being near mindless in threat management...... (ok... that is me trolling and poking a stick at ya.... lol).

But in all seriousness.... I'd hope that there would be some sort of balancing act, a trade off between survivability and threat. Or something. How do you keep the classes competitive with each other as tanks, but keep them varied and interesting? I mean.... hell, for a while there in Wrath... I was one of maybe two or three DK tanks on my faction on my server. I think I was viewed as a masochist by some because DK tanking just was inferior to pally (by a long shot) and warrior. Bears were regarded as "cute but ineffective" (not my words, someone else). That changed, but for a while.... if you didn't roll as a pally tank... you were viewed as some sort of retard in need of dire psychiatric help.

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Originally Posted by Tielyn

I had the new instance blue drop, a bunch of level 85s with me, and I'm still fighting for aggro on multimobs on the Sha of Doubt fight where everyone ran in different directions for the first few seconds, I only had one taunt, and it was reserved for the healer's add. Everything was on cooldown that I could hit, and it's hella frustrating because the attacks hit for much, much, less damage than my bear attacks.

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See.... in this situation... I could argue that you have "bad dps". Let's see.... tank struggling with aggro on mobs... we get spread out due to a "fear"...
um yeah. Chances are, as a dps, my best action would be to move TO the tank, let them grab aggro off of me on that mob, THEN break away and start dps again. Just a guess.

See, to some degree though, I like that. Make dps have to be ware of things and have to know some strategy and actions beyond, "Must mash out my rotashun!!!!!". I know.... I'm a heretic..... I'll burn in hell for such beliefs, but really.... SO MANY OF US complain about the lack of depth in WoW when it's things like THAT which are contributing factors to that problem.

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Originally Posted by Tielyn

So, to sum up, totally non-seriously:
Pallie's new mechanic: Holy Power generation race while playing with threat issues.
Bear's new mechanic: Damn, not enough rage to use defensive abilities... must hit boss faster in order to stay alive while being cursed at by healers.
Warrior's new mechanic: Stance dance like mad, throw banners, and lots of shields!
Monk: Here! Have a statue! Have a beer! And now the Shuffle! Also, I drop healing globes!

I can't speak for DK's -- I've never played one. :)


-Tielyn

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Sounds like Blizzard is trying to implement the "more active" tanking style across the classes..... but is struggling to find a good balance point. Either that or, it's just that alien of a concept to some of the players in those classes that change, as usual, is creating stress and unhappiness.

Edit:
I should add..... I have two pally's myself. Enjoy them both. There have been times though where I've really looked at both though, and thought, "Why the hell am I tanking with my warrior or DK when this is available to me???" For all the talk about raiders going the extra mile to not gimp themselves, to make use of every advantage possible in order to "win"..... there have been times when I look at the tank classes and realize I could probably gain an edge by playing pally. Yes. I am completely of the belief that skill trumps all other factors.... but all things the same, if you're equally proficient with all 4, soon to be 5, tank classes..... why not run the one that has the most advantages?

It seems to me to be a problem that was identified earlier in this thread. Blizz had an aha moment with DKs:

"I really like the way the dk is right now. Almost by accident, we gave them the survivability we have been trying for since mid-wotlk but they have to do their rotation right to see it"
"What if we could do that for all the classes?"
"That would be awesome. Tanks would press buttons to do their job instead of to be a crappy dps for threat"
"Let's do it"
DK is there, so tweak for "fun" play and the new numbers in MoP
Making a new class, so design based on this model
"Oh crap."
"What?"
"Well, what the hell do we do about these shield tanks?"
"Can't let them just block cap or it's not 'active'"
"Exactly. So....what about shield block on cd?"
"Well, I guess they have to push a button for it and if we don't make it a 'shield' ability, they will all say we are just homogenizing"
"Guess that's all we can do without a complete re-design and everyone claiming we just copied DK/Monk abilities over"

I suspect that is the summation of several months of meetings at Blizz lately.

TBH seeing how Sbar sometimes is better than SB i really like how the warrior plays

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Originally Posted by sifuedition

It seems to me to be a problem that was identified earlier in this thread. Blizz had an aha moment with DKs:

"I really like the way the dk is right now. Almost by accident, we gave them the survivability we have been trying for since mid-wotlk but they have to do their rotation right to see it"
"What if we could do that for all the classes?"
"That would be awesome. Tanks would press buttons to do their job instead of to be a crappy dps for threat"
"Let's do it"
DK is there, so tweak for "fun" play and the new numbers in MoP
Making a new class, so design based on this model
"Oh crap."
"What?"
"Well, what the hell do we do about these shield tanks?"
"Can't let them just block cap or it's not 'active'"
"Exactly. So....what about shield block on cd?"
"Well, I guess they have to push a button for it and if we don't make it a 'shield' ability, they will all say we are just homogenizing"
"Guess that's all we can do without a complete re-design and everyone claiming we just copied DK/Monk abilities over"

I suspect that is the summation of several months of meetings at Blizz lately.

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I have a funny feeling you're very close to the truth........

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Originally Posted by Tielyn

Meanwhile....
I took a look at the new warrior stuff briefly last night. It's kinda weird looking - Shield Block, 60 rage, blocks_all_ incoming attacks for 6 seconds, can be used twice in 15 seconds, versus Raise Shield's 20 min rage, up to 60 rage worth of absorb physical attacks based on your AP (so it's bigger when you have Vengance running). So your choices are Big Block OR Small Block, but Small is not tied to a 60 minimum Rage entry point.

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The choices is a percentage based melee damage reduction or a fixed amount any type of damage mitigation. big block small block is completely skewed way of looking at it, shield block for example, against Zon'ozz who hits like a truck, 75k melee hits, a 30-60% damage reduction is huge, but you take the same damage reduction against say 15k melee hits from trash mobs and it tiny. the added complication is that Sbar works against all forms of damage, so against a boss like Vizier Ertan, or Foe Reaper 500 who don't actually melee Sbar end us being the exclusive rage dump. Madness would really make life fun, against the mutated corruption you;d want to keep SB up, except when it casts impale, the regenerative bloods would have a threshold where you would switch from SB to Sbar oprobably at a certain number of stacks of degenerative bite, you;d use the HS to dump on the parasites and the wing/arms tentacles unless the Blistering tentacle debuff was hurting in which case you should switch to Sbar, and for the Last platform with the shrapnel and terrors you;d use Sbar exclusively. they're different forms of mitigation for different scenarios, big block or small block is really not an apt definition.

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Originally Posted by Tielyn

Also, Battle Stance gives you more rage when you hit things, and Berserker Stance gives you rage when you get hit or do damage. Defensive Stance adds 15% to your stam, and does the usual threat thang and makes you uncrittable.

I can see the utility in switching stances when you aren't the active tank, starting off in Berserker stance to gain initial threat if you trust your healers to be on the ball, and also, you have the Banners at 87 to do AoE taunts, which Bears and Pallies definitely lost completely.

(

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Def is 15% damage reduction, not stam increase. Zerker doesn't help with threat, it helps with rage gen, and for the most part 99.99%% of your rage will be spent defensively, not gaining threat, and we have sufficient tolls to get a SB up the moment after we land our initial shield slam. I really don't get why you would go zerker whilst tanking something. I just don't see how a little extra rage is worth the increases in the damage taken and the threat loss.

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Originally Posted by Leucifer

I have a funny feeling you're very close to the truth........

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Dude, he's a Blizzard Employee under cover. There's no way he guessed all of that correctly to the letter.

Current on this week's beta build:

My level 87 paladin: 31.96% block, block stops 31% of incoming damage.
Shield of the Righteous: stops 51% of incoming physical damage (but this is based off of Mastery) on top of your other mitigation for 3 seconds, also adding a multiplier on your WoG. Also, the DPS ran in three different directions like chickens with their heads cut off because the adds hit so hard -- the mage and hunter were trying to kite instead of coming to the tank, despite being told multiple times "Stack on the X."

And yeah, I admit it. :) I didn't actually -play- the warrior -- I just looked at the tooltips and went, "hmmmm...." without going through all of the motions of gemming and configuring buttons. I had about 15 minutes before I went to bed and I was curious. :)

It's just odd to have Zerker stance 'give you rage whenever you get hit' -- because back in Live, if your tank is doing their job, a Fury warrior would never get hit for the rage from that, so it stands to logic that the tank would be the only one to dance into that -- I remember back during BC you had to stance dance to get at the fear break for Nightbane, for example.

Druids do not get rage from being smacked around. They did fix it so Frenzied Regen now can be triggered for smaller heals at less than 60 Rage, so I guess it's an improvement.

You do not have a choice on how much rage Shield Barrier or Frenzied Regen use - it uses up to 60 if you have it, and whatever you have if you don't, for lesser effect. The ideal thing is to -have- the 60 rage to spend, but at least if you don't have it, you still have a stopgap button to press now.

-T.

Warrior stances on live are not related to warrior stances in Mop, the only link is that warriors tank defensive stance. we don't have the stance limited move sets anymore. Def stance has our Crit reduction baked in so in a pinch any spec of warrior can go def stance and tank the boss for a bit until the tan gets a Brez. the only reason a warrior tank would enter a DPS stance would be the same reasons a Guardian Druid would enter humanoid or cat from, utility or DPS, never for threat.

The DPS stances are gonna allow skilled warriors a slight edge, they are pretty much just a choice in how we generate resources. we no longer rest our rage above a threshold when changing stances, this means that a smart arms/fury warrior will usually stay in Battle stance, and then switch to zerker if a pulse of raid damage is about to hit, or if he can't get in melee range you still might go into def stance if the tank dies or if you really want that 15% damage reduction. but either way you pay for it with decreased rage generation, so as a DPS def stance will be a dps loss. It may be possible that zerker stance would allow you to forgo hit/expertise caps as a miss streak is not going to decimate your rage gen in zerker stance, if there's a raid wide damage, which might open up some intresting itemization choices, or allow good warriors with poor luck with drops to work around it. Bad warriors who can't get out the fire will prolly benefit from being in zerkerstance, if they can dump their rage before their die.

I disagree the ideal amount of rage to spend on our variable rage costs dumps is 60rage, for warriors at least. As far as i can tell Sbar doesn't stack, so not only do i not want to clip duration by much, but any absorb value unused is removed the next time I put it up. this means that i only want to put as big a Sbar up to cover me until i need to put the next Sbar up. Against caster bosses I'll put an Sbar up as soon as i can (it'll either usually be a 50rage one if going off the pull) and from that point put Sbar up just as the previous one fades. Weather this means putting a 50rage one up every 5 seconds or 20 rage one every 2 seconds doesn't make a differece beyond me having to press the button more often.

Frenzied Regen and Shield Barrier are very different tools and are going to give warriors and Druids a very different feeling for healers, almost akin to the diference between Powerword: Shield and Heal.

I'm not disagreeing with you; I think we're seeing the mechanic two different ways on how to utilize it.

I think the problem behind the variable rage mechanic is that it works a lot like combo points, only more granularly so. Spending less than 60 rage gives you a lesser effect, but also cashes in all of your current rage, where building up that rage is a very scarce commodity now.

In Live, you can depend on having a full rage bar at all times whenever the boss is on you, but in MoP the burden lies solely on you to actively generate your own rage via successful hits and the occasonal Shout/Enrage. The first round retooling of Frenzied Regen set both it and Savage Defense to be a concrete 60/55 minimum Rage, and the latest revision puts it more in line mechanicswise with Shield Barrier where the more rage you have, the more effective it is. For warriors, I can definitely see the argument of lowballing Shield Barrier to keep a low level one going at all times, roughly akin to the Paladin's Sacred Shield talent.

On the other paw, for bears, cashing in early has a sharply smaller benefit (5K heal at 5 rage versus 40K+ at 60) and resets our rage meter to zero. Might as well wait for an extra swing/Mangle/Lacerate and just get the whole benefit, since at 60 you then have the choice of saying "Hrm, I want Savage Defense instead." So I see it more as a 'crud, almost dead, no cooldowns, magic damage incoming' maneuver. But therein lies the difference between bears and warriors, as you astutely pointed out with the PW:S/Heal comparison.

Overall, it does seem like there's a sense of 'we're shrinking the pool of choices, then adding a unique flavor to each while keeping some stuff similar to another class so you don't have to completely relearn everything.'

A good acid test is whether I can solo the same giant packs of mobs on my druid the same way I've been doing on my paladin the past couple of nights. Judicious use of Flash Heal of all things right after a kill is worth 51K heals, which when combined with the occasional supercharged WoG has been more than enough to keep me up.

Eventually I'll kit out the warrior and try again on the same mobs. :) But this weekend is slated to play with the new 87 dungeons. Also, the beta level cap is now 90.

-Tielyn

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Originally Posted by Tielyn

It's just odd to have Zerker stance 'give you rage whenever you get hit' -- because back in Live, if your tank is doing their job, a Fury warrior would never get hit for the rage from that, so it stands to logic that the tank would be the only one to dance into that -- I remember back during BC you had to stance dance to get at the fear break for Nightbane, for example.

-T.

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Yeah, that is odd. I mean, a warrior running dps ... really shouldn't be taking hits period. Maybe AoE and such.

I get what Teng is saying, that a more skilled warrior will be able to make use of it and squeeze a performance gain from using different stances in various ways. I also get where Tielyn is going with his line of thinking. The basic philosophy is that dps should not be taking unnecessary damage, and this kind of flies in the face of that. It's counterintuitive in a way.

In general, I've always thought the sensible way to handle rage generation would be:
Battle - mix of rage gen from attacking and being attacked, 50/50
Zerker - rage gen from attacking, 80/20
Defensive - rage gen primarily from being attacked, 20/80

To me, that seems like the way it "should" work. Then again, this would probably leave the various warrior specs with a much easier rage management situation.

That's pretty much how it does work in cata, the problem is that prot warriors are nearly always flooded with resources and any time there is significant raid wide damage DPS warriors suddenly have crap tonnes of resources too, and this leads to warriors occasionally making use of an "Environmental Lifetap". Additionally every time the nerf content (prot) warriors suddenly have to deal with a decrease in resources, same goes for us leveling up, when we go back to old content suddenly we sucketh hardcore because our rage is built around damage taken as a percentage of our health-pool

Zerker stance in Mop gives you rage when you take damage, that is not the same as getting hit. its quite possible, and highly probably that you will take some sort of damage in a raid without ever eating a melee swing as a DPS, whether this is sharing stomp damage, bouncing ping pong balls, eating lava beams, taking ice lances, general raid with arcs of shadow crap, catching twilight blasts so your ship doesn't blow up, unavoidable blood explosions or that raid wide damage aura thing deathwing does. Blizzard have realised fights where theres not some sort of raid wide damage going on are kinda really boring to heal. Especially if its a one tank fight. I suppose think of it like this, UH DKs have a talent that essentially let them generate Runic power if they absorb damage with AMS, PVE zerkerstance is essentially that but for warriors, excpet it's not AMS, its our face.

But we're thinking from a purely PVE stand point. In PVP Zerkerstance allows us some resource generation whilst being kited or stunned. Monks, Druids and rogues energy regens regardless of being in melee range or not, same for DK's runes and hunter's Focus every other non mana class regens resources whilst being kited or CCed. if a warrior can't get in melee range for whatever reason he's really screwed since 90% of his resource gen is from being in melee range. Its kinda the current problem hunters have in Cata, if you can get and stay in there dead zone they can't SS and so are kinda in bad way resource wise once they finally get you at range, except focus has some passive regen; Rage doesn't. Zerker stance lets us do that. being good at warrior PVP will mean being good at stance dancing, just like a good hunter won't stick in a single aspect of the entire fight, but will shift as the fight calls for it, a decent warrior will too.

The more I play on the beta, the more i'm thinking warriors are in a good place right now, its a very different place to what we're used too, and i really don't miss the old system at all.

Its my understanding that in mop its more of the...fight or flight mechanic. As in you decide if you want to build threat or reduce damage. It becomes more about balance or being active and hopefully gone are are the days where people "think" they can tank by face rolling.

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

In PVP Zerkerstance allows us some resource generation whilst being kited or stunned. Monks, Druids and rogues energy regens regardless of being in melee range or not, same for DK's runes and hunter's Focus every other non mana class regens resources whilst being kited or CCed. if a warrior can't get in melee range for whatever reason he's really screwed since 90% of his resource gen is from being in melee range. Its kinda the current problem hunters have in Cata, if you can get and stay in there dead zone they can't SS and so are kinda in bad way resource wise once they finally get you at range, except focus has some passive regen; Rage doesn't. Zerker stance lets us do that. being good at warrior PVP will mean being good at stance dancing, just like a good hunter won't stick in a single aspect of the entire fight, but will shift as the fight calls for it, a decent warrior will too.

The more I play on the beta, the more i'm thinking warriors are in a good place right now, its a very different place to what we're used too, and i really don't miss the old system at all.

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....aw hell, I didn't even think about PvP. Yeah. Bears are completely hosed as a PvP spec versus kiters come MoP, because if you get kited, you're stuck at the lower dodge with no rage and no Frenzied Regen/SD available....

...or wait. Let's see. Bearhug, which is a grab and hold, apply damage, but you can't move either -- you can probably be CC'd out of it too. Ursol's Vortex. Mass Entanglement ... affects up to 5 people. Also, the highest passive magic damage resist.

I see what you did there, Blizz.

I rarely PvP, but when I do, it's in bear form, mostly because I'm used to being able to manage incoming damage and dish out more than I get, even with the Vengance nerf in PvP....

Mnemonic:
I'm not sure we -can- be fight or flight mode as tanks unless they change the way threat works. We -have- to be on the boss in most cases, even more so come MoP if it's the only way for us to generate defensive resource power (paladins have one quasi-ranged HP generator in Judgement, but Crusader Strike/HotR is melee only.

Oh, and then the melee DPS complains because we're moving the boss so much.

Seems that more like we have to be more of a three phase cycle:
1) At the front of the cycle, we have no resources and the boss hits us really hard while we generate defensive resources, with the side effect of generating initial threat.
2) Once we have the resources, cash the first couple of cycles to help the healers catch up before you die. This is the new part -- in Live, warriors and druids are happy campers with their full rage bar and can commence gimpy DPS smackdown while watching mechanics.
3a) When the boss mechanic requires you to run out of melee range, assess your resource pool and consider kiting longer in order for the healers to top you off (and maybe drop that DoT -- some classes specifically have a DoT removal/mitigation mechanic) before the boss can catch up, while the DPS is nibbling away at your threat bank.
--or--
3b) Run back in with or without resources. Go back to 1.

It's going to be definitely different. The mechanics of tanking 5 mans feels to me like 75% resource management, 10% boss mechanics, 15% threat mechanics in MoP, compared to 30% threat mechanics, 65% boss mechanics, 5% rotation mechanics (because I've got my rotation in my head) like it is in Live. YMMV. And I am sad that I really am liking the feel of pally tanking mechanics way more than bear tanking, plus having to fight for gear with all the new monks....(and we thought it was bad having to be the only class to have four people on our tier token, and all three others being among the most popular class choices -- mage/rogue/DK...)

-Tielyn

Edited PS: It suddenly occurs to me that of the five bosses in the starter dungeons in Pandaria, roughly half of them (first boss of Jade Temple, first and last boss of the Brewery) actually stand in place most of the time and do not chase you, and the only chasing you do is add management. Four of them (first boss of Jade Temple, and all three bosses of Stormstout Brewery) actually have a 'move or be an inconvenience to your healers' mechanic), plus the 'one of you is a shadow leper' mechanic of the last boss of the Jade Temple... you may have something there after all, Mnemonic.

I don't Mnemonic was actually inferring kiting, he was talking about balancing between threat and damage reduction, however as threat is so easy now, i can fart in the room and the mobs stick to me like glue, I don't really see the choice; I;m never not going to choose threat as long as i having something hitting me. for the same reason I'm not too worried about resource management whilst kiting. If i'm kiting a mob the general reason to do so is to not get hit by him. If i'm not getting hit, i shouldn't be taking damage, or at least significantly less than if the boss is twatting me up the front, so my resources are best left not spent so i have them to use once I get back into melee range.

This is no different to how Blood DKs work at present. They can't DS at range and they seem fine, they have Bone shield to help them get through the first few seconds of the fight, and its not like warrior/druid won't also have 1 minute damage reduction CDs. hell as a warrior its possible to have 50 rage before you even press your first shield slam, and if you abuse Avatar and zerker rage your first SS generates another 40.