WotLK -- What Is Fun?

[Ciderhelm]

There's been discussion on the Beta forums that tanking classes are going to be made more fun. It sounds like that process is ongoing and the ideas aren't set in stone, so let's help. I'll keep this news at the top over the weekend and perhaps into early next week.

Concept
State one or more thoughts on what you've enjoyed about tanking as well as ideas to make tanking more fun for your class. Be creative.

Rules

• The assumption is that Blizzard is trying to attract new players to tanking who might otherwise not be interested. Responses should be conducive to bringing new players into the tanking scene for each class.
• Responses should be class specific to the character you've invested in the most. This is flexible, but avoid the "I want X because another class has X."
• No rebuttals. You can bounce off other people's ideas, but this is not a debate thread.

I'll go ahead and start with thoughts I've had and expressed in the past. Each of mine is more focused on Protection Warriors.

Health Regeneration (Leveling/Grinding/Dailies)
Health regeneration opens up several options, tactics, and "I can't believe I lived through that" experiences that aren't available when health is just being chipped away; it also reduces downtime the 10+ second downtimes that are common and dreadfully boring when leveling/grinding on mobs that use elemental damage.

Lifegiving Gem was a class defining trinket. Leveling again as Protection, Spyglass of the Hidden Fleet is constantly on cooldown for me. These have only been available to raiding Warriors.

Ranged Attacks
Decapitator and Rocket Launcher are fun. Decapitator was responsible for many of the original Heroic Shattered Halls timed runs, due to the precision and range. These have been only available to raiding or engineering Warriors.

I find myself using a gun nearly every time I'm snared/rooted or otherwise can't catch up to the mob. I also do this when I can't or shouldn't engage a mob due to other responsibilities or strategy.

Big Shield Slams...
...are really fun.

[Alent]

Hmm... this presents a dilemma - I love my Paladin, but I've invested over a year of sweat and blood in my Druid and enjoy tanking both. I guess I'll go with both.

Druid

Sheer Endurance.

Some of my fondest memories of ZA were when shit hit the fan. I recall one Nalorakk kill where the Paladin tank had an epic string of taunt resists and I tanked almost the entire fight myself. Timing out my badge of tenacity and pocketwatch to reduce the chance of bleeds hitting, and using my enemy swing timer to pop Barkskin inbetween swings when I did get bled, I was able to hold it together long enough for the raid to kill Nalorakk. The paladin was able to land a taunt right before I died going into troll phase, and held Nalorakk for the last 8%.

Months later, when I started approaching the 80K effective health mark, I ended up solo tanking Halazzi when my paladin partner died to a pair of saber lashes. Blew the pug's mind. I simply love the ability to endure massive amounts of punishment. As the man in the glowing box once said... "Takes a Lickin', and keeps on tickin'."

Barkskin + Hurricane pulling

When I started tanking heroics, I began thinking about how AoE threat worked. I realized as I pushed on I would never be able to consecrate, but I realized the power of hitting every mob in the pull. This evolved into using Barkskin and hurricane to pull with, giving me a solid 500~600 threat on pull to every mob in the pull. It saves healers from pulling early, and it makes it possible for me to do Heroic shattered halls speed runs very smoothly.

Using Rebirth while tanking

One of the most enjoyable and worst moments in my tanking life was when the paladin tanking Halazzi with me died in the first 10% of the fight. Not wanting to tank the fight myself, at that moment I didn't realize I could, I blew trinkets and let trinkets carry me into the split, picked up the Lynx, told the DPS to ease off a bit, and asked for a PW:S as I was about to B.rez the paladin. The raid let out a collective gasp of air as I cast barkskin to exit bear form, immediately rebirthed the paladin and went back to bear, and resumed tanking as normal.

I guess to sum it up, what I enjoy most about my druid is pushing the envelope. Trying to take the tools I have and apply them intelligently to a problem. I feel my hands are tied as a druid tank, despite being such a diverse hybrid, I can't use the majority of my tools in combat at all. In many ways I feel I'm defined by what I can't do, and when I overcome a barrier, it's the greatest feeling in the world.

Something that would just make the character more enjoyable... My gear is lacking in the stats that matter to me as a tank. Almost all of the frustration I've gone through with my character is that whoever itemized my class seems to think that more armor and raw stats are the answer to everything. I haven't been crit immune through defense rating since I upgraded to T4, there is no way to hit cap with druid tank gear period, and hitting expertise cap with tank gear is only possible at the end of sunwell. These are powerful threat stats that are just not readily accessible to me as a druid tank and it disappoints me. I can gain access to excellently itemized tank gear - if I PVP. S3 and S4 had near perfect stat distributions, albeit if a little low on armor.

To close Druid off...
Feral Charge...
... is AWESOME.

Paladin

Salvaging bad pulls with a well placed consecrate.

It's not as easy as it looks, you've accidentally pulled two groups and one mob makes a beeline for your healer. You aim a taunt over, Drop consecrate, judge righteousness on skull, reseal and start moving through and smacking mobs you think you're about to lose, struggling to keep everything infront of you so you can block it. A hairy pull later you're on top, and rolling on that BoE green that nobody wants.

[item]Petrified Lichen Guard[/item]

What paladin doesn't love this shield? It made the levelling experience enjoyable, it is the greatest enemy of Illidan's Demon hunter Trainees, bane of melee trash from Nagrand's ogres to Black morass' crockolisks alike.

Pulling tools

When I got my Linken's Boomerang, and later when I made my Goblin Rocket Launcher, I rejoiced. They were the pulling tools I never had. Avenger's Shield is supposed to be one but it fails miserably due to the snare and range issues. (Raid bosses aggro before you get close enough to use it) Of all the obstacles a tank has to overcome, inability to pull should not be one of them. Since replacing both trinkets with vital avoidance trinkets, I find it easier to run in, consecrate, Judge skull, and LoS the entire pull to a nice spot rather than attempt avenger's shield.

Shield Block period

Discovering the fun things I could do with Shield Block Value was like a whole new world unfolding before my eyes. Here was a mitigation stat I'd never experienced and was simply awestruck by. Having new tools at my disposal was great.

All in all, I am highly satisfied with my paladin, but this was not always the case. For a very long time I did not understand seals and judgments, creating a strong... lack of aggro on the current kill target. As I began to understand judgments, my single target threat rose and I eventually became a threat machine. It was a hard road, but a satisfying one to learn in the end. Today I prefer my paladin and plan on making it my main going into Wrath.

Something that I feel detracts from the class for me is actually the lack of a movement skill. One of my favorite parts of Diablo 2 was my Chargadin, Charge was a class defining skill that is seemingly absent even though all the other elements are present or being added (Smite = Righteous Shield Slam. There was an AoE hammer move which admittedly behaved and looked slightly different. Exorcism, elemental resist auras, etc.)

On the upside, and I apologize if this isn't entirely appropriate to say, I do love the fact that unlike my druid, My paladin has tanking gear with actual logical tank stats. I can optimize my gear for any number of mitigation, avoidance or threat configurations. It just feels good to have gear designed for all facets tanking.

To Close Paladin off...
Hammer of Wrath Crits...
... are extremely gratifying

[Leytur]

I like tanking the most because not everyone can do it well.

Certain classes are considered "EZ mode." What I find funny is one of those classes is considered a hunter yet the moniker "huntard" as if hunters sucked.

So each class has a certain "EZ Coefficient." Some classes (mage) have a highe EZQ than others (aff lock maybe? I dunno). But it seems that all three tanking classes have a pretty low EZQ. Even Paladins.

So while I like the idea of making tanking more fun, I also hope they don't dumb it down to the point where a Tenacity pet could do it.

[Grulgor]

I guess I have only 1 major problem with tanking at the moment as a prot warrior and that's targetting mobs at the beginning of a fight to slap devestates on a few mobs...it's a real pain in the arse and I doubt the cone Aoe we're getting isn't going to change the fact we need to switch between targets like this.

I tried the shift+tab to target the last enemy so I could at least definitely target my 2nd target after slamming the main target but for some reason it ends up targetting a different mob. Occassionally when I've had a mob in front of me in perfect LoS and gone for the tab button it has targetted something across the room in a different group. If they popped in a targetting macro that enables us to target the raid icons that would be REALLY useful for me. I mean, I don't know if it's possible at the moment, but I would love it.

Something else I would like would be a similar ability to misdirect that I could use that causes high threat with my initial ranged pull so I could immediately concentrate on getting aggro on the group instead of shield slamming the mob then attempting to target other mobs. This links in with the above problem I'm having though.

But fun, to be honest, I enjoy tanking as it is-I'm the guy that controls the pace of an instance and keeps me m8s safe (usually :P). Although I would be happy to see the cone Aoe and thunderclap to have the capacity to hold aggro over my healer for the entire fight.

[Armageddn]

My main toon is a warrior,

Well first of all i think every one could agree on that big numbers are fun

Spell Block
I'd like to have some block mechanic that works on spells and magic attacks

Throw Shield
I'd really like to throw my shield at someone and stun him just like the mobbs in BT

[dotOrion]

Druid-biased post as that's my main

Big numbers
People always say it's DPS that is addicted to big numbers, I say tanks (and especially druid tanks) are also surrounded by big numbers. You're sitting there at ~20K health, ~35K armor, you're taking enormous hits from bosses, and it still takes a few of them before you go down. But thanks to the big healing numbers flying around you, you stay alive. It's a rush, a feeling of immortality.

Group synergy
A tanks best friend is his healer. A healers best friend is his tank.
Assuming decent healing, you are keeping alive the rest of the party as much as the healer is, it's just a lot less obvious.

If you cyclone an enemy tank on your general in Alterac Valley, the enemy raid will know very soon just how much safety he was offering them as your general wipes the floor with them.

Role switching
As a feral druid, on trash I am usually the tank on the first kill target, simply because I can then help DPS on the second kill target as soon as mine is dead, and help out with innervates, battlerezzes, etc.

Related to this, during leveling and grinding I am a rogue. I do not have trouble bringing in money/doing my dailies. Leveling was fun and fast.

I've always 'sold' the druid class like this to my guildies: if you wanna try a tank, roll a druid, level like a rogue and tank like a warrior in endgame.

[Lore]

Blizzard already did everything I wanted to make the class more fun :P

[Stramash]

As a Warrior:

Blowing all your cooldowns
Done reactively there's nothing like the adrenaline rush from popping everything you have to survive a healer death, D/C, mistake etc. Dying seconds after a boss is downed because last stand just wore off is oddly gratifying.

On the proactive side of cooldown usage I get a lot of satisfaction from using cooldowns on dodge trinklets, shield wall, last stand etc agressively to help my healers through the rough part of an encounter. Taking damage is the passive side of taking, these abilities make it more participative.

So more short term mitigation/avoidance boosts please. Useful for class 'flavour' too IMO, I'd be happy with less baseline mitigation than another class (Druids spring to mind) if I was able to ramp it way up when needed, as long as the two average out about the same and stay balanced.

Stance dancing
"If you can keep your head when all others about you are losing theirs.."
I love having to stay on my toes and stance dancing is always a fun mechanic for that. Am guessing there'll still be plenty fears in the game.

Add more encounters that benefit from Defensive>Battle>Defensive stance shifts maybe? With the shorter cooldown I can see Retaliation being useful as a aoe threat spike, make it against groups that hit hard enough and you'll need to be quick to get back onto defence.

Stuns
Dazing those Amanshi Scout pats that wander round the corner is always fun, as is KO'ing that mob that was about to have a go at the overeager mage. Less stun-immune trash please.

Being in the eye of the hurricane
More esoteric and similar to my first point but we all love being right at the heart of the encounter and consequently being able to swing the fight in the raids favour.

Perhaps more talents that give temporary buffs might also add more depth to the fight, playing to that situational awareness; Say you fold Critical Block into Sword and Board, so the proc is a boost to SBV, but applies only to the next ability used. Do you hit Shield Slam for the threat or Shield Block for the mitigation? Think quick.

Mixed blessing debuffs could also add to the encounter here; Say you have a mocking blow type shout (or roar, judgement) that boosts raid DPS but enrages the mob and has a taunt element onto you? Wipe-or-win buttons sound odd but really aren't that different from Shield Wall et al, they'd have to be used at just the right moment.

[Gomer]

SUNDERING CLEAVE.

Daddy wants a low damage, high threat move that is accessible from DS. I want to hit 3-4 mobs. And I want them to stick to me, not like a consecrate but dang close. This frontal AOE crap, positioning nightmare. I want a sundering WW in DS.

[Thorik]

To me, what’s fun is a tanking an encounter cleanly when it’s considered to be difficult; Especially when I’m doing things that aren’t considered my strong suit. I absolutely love doing Hyjal when we don’t have as many tanks as usual. I get to practice my multi-tanking and run around like a madman. One of my fondest memories from way back was on one of my guild’s first majordomo kills, where other tanks went down, and I picked up their adds, somehow managing to stay alive.

What’s fun is huge numbers… on block value. I’m constantly amused by mobs hitting me when I’m using block value gear and getting things in my combat log along the lines of: X hits you for 57 (925 blocked).

What’s fun is scrolling combat text during avoidance streaks. I can’t help but chuckle when I have several mobs on me or a fast attacking boss, and I see text pop up rapidly along the lines of: parry, dodge, miss, dodge, dodge, miss. So long as it doesn’t create rage starvation anyway…

What would I like to see added? Sundering Cleave is a pretty slick idea, but what I’ve been tossing around in my head is an ability on a cooldown of 5-6 minutes that makes all attacks apply sunder for the next 10 seconds or so. That way you don’t have to worry about early sunders on boss fights. Perhaps something to replace vigilance?

[SuperFlounder]

Confirmation that its actually fun is probably just about the best news I've heard all day.

No warrior has mentioned Shockwaves. Is it useful in 5 mans for the initial pull or does it just lead to rage starvation and dps dying?

We've been asking for something like sundering cleave for a while, and Blizzard most likely won't add such a simple mechanic they've resisted adding to warriors for 3 years at this point wrath imo.

[djiss]

I'm sure everyone here saw 300 and everyone remind this scene...
YouTube - 300 Shield Bash

That's what I want. If I have only 1 thing to get, it's this.

Ok, Shield Slam is now trainable. But Prot war should have something specific to their spec to improve this move. A talent that increase the SS dmg by x% and add a % chance to knock back your opponent (knockback effect adding threat so a chance to do more threat with it) would be awesome.

Improved Spell Reflect. With a 15 rages cost, let the duration like it is, decrease to cooldown a little and add 1-2 charges.

[SuperFlounder]

Whoops, I posted like, not what I wanted to actually post. Probably is best to read what you copy and paste first, my bad.

Affirmation that warrior tanking is fun always great to hear. It's always good knowing you aren't the crazy one.

In terms of what's fun? I love Magister's Terrace personally, its really the best instance in my opinion, and it should be considered the standard of quality and variety in wrath.

I don't like it when all fights are me watching my health and threat meter. I like tanking mechanics but even moreso when things are varied enough to leave fights where its not all tank and spank. In fact, I think they need more fights that don't require a tank or tanking is minimized, like Kael's second half, or the summer festival boss. At the same time when you are tanking its a place where you find ample room to use all your abilities and cooldowns. I've done it on heroic with no cc before with only one wipe on the pvp boss. Very good times.

However, at the same time, I always do it with friends who respected that I need to get spell reflects off, etc. Challenging tanking is only fun if you know your other teams mates are equally focused and trustworthy Getting the boss down after 5 wipes will only feel worth it if you trust everyone was doing their best. To bring it back to making it fun in wrath, not sure if I'd love Magister's on Heroic with a pug, I've never tried and never will. It seems, however, that's the standard of fun they're trying to get. That's a very high standard.

[Ashiva]

I would have to say my personal favorite at this point to me was being in a Kael fight in Magister's terrace where I was only needed for half the fight, then being the last man standing during one of his stunned moments before he did a gravity flux again and wailing on him (And as he comes out of his stun he does hit you once or twice before doing the next gravity flux) and getting a crit shield slam the moment he smacks you, so he dies, then you die. Wonderful feeling.

From a warrior standpoint tanking, I think Shield slam could be improved to do more damage, giving a protection tank an ability to produce some more threat damage based on DPS, like Druid's have with their DPS based threat generation. I've seen Druid tanks hold their mob from damage alone, which is a great thing when you have high melee DPS from Rogues and RiP's, and an enhance shammy or two in the mix.

Maybe they could make cleave do a high amount of threat, but instead of two, maybe increase the amount of mobs to 3 or 4, but do slightly less damage between the three/four.

Another issue I find is both the fact we have no raid wide type buffs we can give out, and the length of the buffs we do have don't seem to give any real benefit and usually end up wasting precious rage when we have to constantly reapply during a 10min + fight. It would be nice to have a sort of raid wide shout/buff we could give that might increase damage or crit chance, and/or as well increasing the length to the buff(s) to a more acceptable raiding lvl (Even talented, the shouts we have don't last nearly as long as one would like) Maybe increase the length to say, 8 minutes without talent points, that way with talent points you could say push it close to a Blessing of Kings or Gift of the Wild timers.

What's fun? being on Rage Winterchill the very first time setting foot in the instance to Hyjal and bringing him from 50% to 47% by yourself (My healers and DPS had died on death and decay)
Think we didn't do too bad with it being the very first time for 22-23 people in the raid seeing him on their mains.

[veneretio]

Ok, Shield Slam is now trainable. But Prot war should have something specific to their spec to improve this move. A talent that increase the SS dmg by x% and add a % chance to knock back your opponent (knockback effect adding threat so a chance to do more threat with it) would be awesome.

Check out the new Improved Shield Bash. 10% more Shield Slam damage.

As to MgT, it's probably one of the least fun instances they've designed when it first came out thanks entirely to the glaive knockdown which thankfully they changed. (making the place reasonably enjoyable) That being said, Kael can be tanked by a Rogue (and not a well geared one I might add) from start to finish. I hardly consider that the gold standard of tank friendly boss.

The key to Warrior fun is less micromanaging, less downtime and more mobility. I think bloodbath and shockwave are great steps in the right direction to multi-target tanking and I'm even looking forward to less downtime thanks to being able to stunlock a large number of adds while leveling. (bloodbath + piercing howl is enticing) I'm even exciting about Safeguard allowing us to get out of snares. Overall, I think Blizzard has already taken massive steps towards making Warriors a whole lot more fun, but I'm definitely not opposed to further steps taken to make it even more fun

[Sangi]

Shield Reflect

Running right in front of the waves of undead in hyjal, popping a shield reflect and watching 6 shadow bolts fly in and then back to the casts. Or standing back fighting a group in a 5 man while a caster throws bolts at you while you reflect them back at him/her/it.

Organized Chaos

When I was running with DPS that seriously out geared me or accidentally pulling that second group of trash in BT. It is a lot more fun when things go wrong then when they go right. Knowing that you couldn't lock down the pull situation but merely had to contain and control it until it was manageable. Challenging shouts, Stuns fears, taunts, mocking blows, intervenes to get to where your going (and possibly save that DPSer), all the little tools that are there to make a crazy situation a little less hectic and get it under control.

Crazy Burst Threat

A huge shield block set and giant numbers for threat. That warlock riding you on threat all night with his 7K chain instant crits? Drop the shield slam set on and watch him and you open up. Kicking up a ton of front loaded threat so the DPS can go all out and hearing the druid tank say he actually has to work to keep up with you on threat now.

Last Man Standing

Every thing has gone wrong on the fight. People are dying right and left due to AoE or standing in the fire. Your healers are gone. Your DPS is gone. But the boss is at 1% and if you can just find it in you to stay up a little bit longer you can down him and call it a night. Throw up shield wall and last stand jump into berserker stance pop rage and start spamming execute. Then watch boss die just as shield wall runs out.

[Lego]

I never really experienced much raid content but do a lot of 5 mans and heroics and the occasional Karazan when friends in other guilds need a tank. But I can't count on how many times in a 5 man I would be last man standing when a mob is at 20% or 10% or lower on a pull whether it would be just a crazy pull or a boss mob and your burn all your cool downs, trinkets, running around like a chicken with your head cut off, or whatever and then died when it was down to like 1% or 2% it would have been kind of fun to carry the day. I think it would be kind of fun to see an increase in damage and defense each time a party member dies maybe increase your size a little bit each time as well for a visual intimidation effect, kind of like in the movies when the heroes friends or what not die and he goes on a rampage killing EVERYTHING while looking bigger than life to the enemy lol. Heck even if I died without killing the last mob the fun of it would be hella cool. No idea what I would call it as I am not very eloquent with words.

[Nez]

II play a Warrior so these are things for us!

I think that having a charging "knock down" move would be fun as heck and sweet for pulling.
I want a whirlwind move that hits with your shield as well as your main hand.
Thunder Clap should hit everything in its radius. That would be really really fun.
And to be able to throw your main hand weapon would totally rock!
Best of all would be to have finishing moves like mortal combat!

[Kavtor]

A few things that I haven't seen mentioned.

Actually being able to kill elite mobs.
In vanilla wow, and many of the TBC group quest mobs, I'm sure most of us can remember various classes having enough tricks to be able to take down an elite mob by themselves. Not quickly, and by using every CD they had, and lots of practice, but still possible. Warriors tended to get smashed. But with excessive block value, we could join in the fun as well.
Being able to farm the elite trees in Skettis is pretty fun, even though they don't hit hard at all. Similarily, solo tanking Phase 1 RoS. Unfortunately, the changes to warrior block mechanics will make that quite a bit more difficult. It's always seemed to me that the warrior class design has been as a less effective solo class, and relatively more effective group class. Even though 95% of my play time is raiding, I think it would be fun to see a better balance in warrior solo play, relative to the crazy things druids and paladins can pull off.

In addition to excessive levels of block value, excessive levels of avoidance can be fun too. ( and clearly broken ) But being able to pop trinkets and avoidance tank a fel raged Gurtogg after he's blown up his first target is pretty cool. I think I'm going to miss my [item]Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch[/item] even more than I did [item]Lifegiving Gem[/item] as the ratings devalue the item.

Being able to 'tank' dungeon trash pulls by controlling the mobs, rather than generating threat on them is fun. Using stuns, slows, taunts, fears, intervene, disarms, etc to control the mobs in the pull and their damage output, rather than tanking them traditionally.

[Aaesop]

On bloodboil I was the only tank alive and under 35% health. Arcing Smash hits you for 6k.. It was amazing and made me forever happy that I keep the talent. While my raid group didn't down him, I stayed there strong for a good extra minute. Even yelling at someone who peeled off to reset it "Get the F**k back here, nobody called for a wipe!"

I already felt at home with warrior tanks and even moreso that night but WOTLK brings my chair closer to that table. I don't want to be the only choice to tank a boss, but I do want it to be a damn hard decision when looking at Dreador and myself. Maybe tanking that boss is going to come down to /roll lol.

Rotation: lol wut I'm gonna have a rotation thats going to include more than consecrate, a seal/judgement and consecrate? Thank you blizzard.

Damage:Not exactly Paladin specific but it was alway a pain doing those dailies out at Quel'danas alone. Either getting jumped by a zerging crew or jus the sheer amount of time it always took to get them done. I'm glad to see I won't be spending insane amounts of time with dailies that take my rogue half of the time.

For veterans it's a welcome change, for people that were always looking in the window at us, it might give them that push to come in and become a tank.