WotLK -- What Is Fun?

[SuperFlounder]

I've seen rogues tank Kael in heroic MgT as well but not rogues that are equivalent to the encounter. Outgearing something will always lead to that kind of stuff. Rogues can tank Mother, its a plain balancing issue with the class that isn't game breaking enough to fix, or atleast Blizzard doesn't think so. I will admit the stun needed to be fixed, that was just something I took as the challenge of the instance. The difficulty in pulling fewer mana leechers so my group doesn't wipe was always more of a hindrance to me, frankly. I don't really understand how warriors or druids were expected to tank those. I'd spend 2 minutes standing there waiting for exactly the right moment to pull only 1 or 2 groups at a time.

In general tools are fun, liabilities aren't. Shield block as it is now is a liability. Not keeping it up will directly cause you to risk huge amounts of spike. The new changes make it a tool. Thus huge improvement.. well, after the buff huge improvement.

[suesse_llane]

Spell reflect - amazingly fun mechanic introduced in tbc

Non-tanking Warrior Prot DPS - After devastate was introduced, prot dps seems to be in a very good place. Less powerful than fury/arms but not so much so to seem useless. True min-maxing will replace the prot dps, but for the majority of players, they have a tanking character who can pick up the dps roll when needed. This makes raiding farmed content less annoying (when you don't have to tank), doing dailys less annoying, and allows you to do some basic pvp if you feel the urge without spending 100g. Feral druids and deathknights (from what I've heard) will also have this ability; however, protection paladins still seem to be lacking here. Over the last year, they've worked on helping healing classes do this with +healing->+dmg changes, so I assume protection will get some help here. Basic deal, you can't make a tank character only playable in pve groups if you want every character to have a full experience of the game (I think blizzard wants this).

Random crap is not fun, but they're working on it.
Miss: +hit is on a lot of tanking gear (raid tbc gear)
Parry/Dodge: Expertise on tanking gear (high level raid tbc)
Parry Haste: Removed for some insane bosses
Crushing Blow: Removed for most high level bosses and removed entirely in wotlk
Taunt Resist: Half-assed fix with melee +hit (still can't get capped though) -- also physical school vulnerability with Brutallus

Tanks who randomly die or lose aggro are very annoying to the whole group, hopefully this will be fixed which will really help new tanks learning to tank without giving up.

Along the lines of the Sporeggar shield, I sometimes use a engineering crafted shield which is similar, but has a really badass graphic and scales much better with higher numbers of mobs than the Sporeggar shield. It's very fun... but.. The fact that warriors would use something like these crappy shields when we have sweet epics really drives home the fact that warriors need something to allow them to hold aggro on 5+ mobs (not over aoe, but over healing aggro).

[Urhan]

Yeah, make tanking more fun - but it should be the kind of fun that'll appeal to people who'll like the tank's role, i.e. a lot of responsibility. So give them "command"-type abilities. Stuff that, applied in the right situation, can make a difference in a fight by preventing what otherwise would be a wipe. A raid- or group-wide fear break, for example (on a long enough cooldown that it can't be used multiple times in a fight.) Or a magnetic pull-type ability like the DK's have, only usable on friendly players - if someone's standing in the fire or about to aggro a mob, yank them back to safety. This sort of thing would also lower the frustration factor of grouping with newer players - you can fix some of their mistakes without it costing you a repair bill.

[Ghreystar]

i dont personally think tanking is meant for the masses, nor should it be. the best part of being a tank is knowing you control the fight, that you are the first one into battle, and that you alone keep all the shit in line. its also the satisfaction of knowing you are badass enough to be a main tank. i live to be upfront in the chaos... right out there on the frontline. knowing in the back of my head that when i screw up, 24 people die. i like the responsibilty, and i feed on combat. to me not raiding is wasting time.

ever wonder why your dps'ers die first? simple - they are bored. a trained monkey can dps. thats what makes tanks special. not everyone can do it and not everyone should.

spell reflect is just good fun. holding aggro on three mobs in hyjal, whilst only beating on one is laughable. crit shield slams are the second best. i dont know what i like better, the animation of the tauren backhanding mob face, or that big 'ol number popping out of their head.

i like the ideas of the whirlwind shield/mainhand combo. i also would like to see shield slam offer a chance to stun or knock back. however something that offers better aoe tps would certainly be appreciated.

[Hypatia]

I'd have to say that the two most fun things that are actually part of tanking are:

Being one of the last people standing after things have gone wrong, and just holding on and holding on and holding on until it's over. On the one hand, that kind of thing only really happens when things go wrong. On the other hand... it really gives the feeling of "Oh god... time to rest". I have this mental image of planting my shield in the ground, planting my ass on it, and breaking out a canteen to cool off while the healers go scrape everybody else up off the floor.

That's a GOOD feeling.

The other really good feeling is saving people from things, including themselves. Intervene was an awesome new ability in BC, because it gave us a way to really quickly get to the person who pulled aggro and *do* something about it. It's most satisfying when you've just had the most squishy person in your five-man pull aggro on something they really shouldn't have (big melee type), and you intervene to them and *taunt on the way past*. Hah! Take that, you brute!


In general, I think the important part is: anything that makes you feel like a hero. A good tank takes pride in holding aggro and taking little damage while being beat down. But it's not heroic. It's the bad times, and the ability to survive them, that makes tanking the best. When the healer goes down and you just barely manage to both hold aggro and avoid dying long enough for the party DPS to finish everything off. When all of the DPS goes down, and you and the healer bully through the grueling effort to finish the enemy off. Standing at a flag in Arathi Basin with five guys beating on you for thirty seconds asking themselves "Why won't this guy DIE!?!"


These disasters are the golden moments that invoke a visceral response. Technical tanking (maxing TPS, avoiding bad stuff, etc.) is enjoyable... technically. But that adrenaline rush and knowing that people are depending on you to survive. That's something else.

[Ghladum]

Minor self-healing

I agree whole-fartedly with Cider's wish for a small but noticeable HoT or health regen mechanic.

Last Man Standing

The idea of getting stronger as your teammates die is nothing new: plenty of mobs enrage after you kill one of their brethren. Having an enrage ability that decreases damage taken and increases damage output (nothing too, too huge - say 10/20/30% as 1/2/3 of your party members die) would be a huge blast. It might also make for a decent Protection-tree PVP ability.

Or better yet, the mechanic could open up Execute to be able to be used in Defensive stance (instead of the 30% dmg increase outright) - if you had a trinket, pot or ability ready to be used, tanks could really save the day by being able to solo the last 3-4% of a dungeon boss or that last quarter-percent of that raid boss instead of having those hilarious 1% wipes.

Snap Aggro on Pulls

It is fun and satisfying to tank 5-7 adds with my limited resources (Tclap + Demo Shout! Yeah!), but one of the things that could easily separate good tanks from bad, would be to finally give Warriors an ability that establishes more aggro than the healers on every mob in a large pull. Let's say a 1 min cooldown so it's not spammable (used once per pull), 500 dmg attack that is AoE based and not limited in number. With this tool, on most pulls, you're able to reign in and get the first 5-10 seconds of attention from the mobs. But if you're not a good, attentive tank (or your DPS is mentally challenged) this aggro won't hold them forever - a good tank will continue to mouseover-Sunder or whatever your preferred multimob tanking strat is.

Frankly, I'm not to enthused with Tclap getting "buffed" to handle 5 mobs - it still seems like the above idea would be useful: the Warrior can handle AoE mob pulls just like the Paladin can, with one difference: the DPS must still use single-target DPS - if they AoE crazily, the warrior still won't be able to hold threat above them - which is fine... it gives Warrior vs. Pally tanking "flavor" while retaining relative equality.

This would address the main headache with Warrior multimob tanking - initial aggro - making it more fun.

Aggro from damage instead of Threat-modifiers

Simple enough. Other tanking classes have it, I'd love to have it, and it solves some of the Warrior's illogical weaknesses. I don't have a Beta key, but from what my buddies are telling me, this has been implemented in Wrath. Woohoo!

Miscellaneous

(Warning! Off-topic!)

Frankly, I'm not enthused for Blizzard's "We want to make tanking more fun." appeal in the last week. As others have pointed out (although this website in particular will have a biased group selection) tanking is already fun.

For us, it's fun because it's difficult. Because there's responsibility. Because we have to think (and with 39 intelligence, this is quite difficult!) and react, and adjust, and on and on and on. We are the alpha-types, who desire control.

"Let's make tanking more fun." is Blizzard-speak for "Let's get more people tanking." Given the obvious fact that Blizzard can't change people's personality, only game mechanics, this is bound to mean that Blizzard is actually saying "Let's make tanking mechanics easier."

Because I guarantee that THAT is the only way they'll get more tanks. So what if you come up with "fun" abilities and mechanics? If there's still the pressure, the responsibility, the smartness that is required - what have you really changed? But if you take away the requirement for thoughtful, smart and eloquent tanking... ah... now we have plenty of tanks that can step up and keep up aggro.

It's a fine line between an overpowered, EZ tank, and a tank that requires cunning and skill to excel, but I hope they find that line instead of "making it fun" for any random yackoff.

[bludwork]

Interesting question. I thought about it for a bit and there's nothing I can say about tanking that it fun for me. It's simply a means to an end.

Killing hard bosses is a lot of fun, hard bosses like archimonde, vashj and illidan. Tanking allows me to exert the maximum influence on acheiving that goal, perhaps implicitly implying you don't have much influence on the battle as a healer or dps.

[Jasra]

There are many different ways to have fun, but I have to say this is the big one for me:

Fun is learning a new trick (especially by thinking out of the box), and being noticeably better because of it. It's like leveling the player instead of the character.

[Heartwood]

From a Prot War perspective, one of the 'unfun' sides of tanking to-date is that it can be *exhausting!* Depending on what you're tanking mind you. Multi-mob tanking has generally been the worst. Prot War tanking of H SH has always been the worst instance for leaving me simply exhausted by the end. Blizzard seems to have addressed this issue in WotLK, so it may be a moot point.

Graphically, tanking for Prot Wars is pretty boring business. No flashy lightening bolts, no pulsing consecrates, just whacka-whacka with the sword, and thunka-thunka with the shield. Our new AoE (Shockwave) should be a little more glittery and interesting to watch. In general, Prot Wars could use a little more graphical 'glitter' to make the game more interesting to watch as we play.

Grinding/leveling has traditionally been very slow. I leveled to 70 as Prot spec, just to *really* get to understand it. I'd watch mages kill 2-3 mobs in the time it took me to slowly chop down one, which was disheartening and meant the reward of leveling or completing quests was much slower. Again, it looks like WotLK may have addressed this issue. I'm not in beta, so I can't say for certain. Dealing with multiple mobs at once, without a lot of mental exhaustion, should make Prot Wars much more interesting to play.

-Heart

[Mangea]

A couple of points I'd like to touch on are group synergy and, as the topic says, sheer fun.

Something that might help with synergy could be something akin to sharing the received heals, for example 2% or 4% or whatever of the healing received is shared to all the party/raid members, or perhaps 50% of the overhealing received split evenly between party/raid members in order to work with the new Holy Priest talent, perhaps within a certain range. Call it Teamwork or There's No I In Team or whatever other hare-brained name the devs want (because honestly, after Sword and Board, the names can't get much campier), but it would be great to have something that touches on how the tank is the focal point of a group effort.

Regarding sheer fun, two of the most fun abilities we got in BC were Spell Reflect and Intervene. Not only were these fun, they were remarkably innovative. With WotLK, some of the fun things I'm looking forward to are the new and improved Shield Block and the new Strength to Block Value ratio. Cider's right on the money; Huge SSlams are huge fun. But something new? How about a glyph to SSlam that adds a small aoe knockback? I'm imaging something where you've got a ton of mobs on you, you Shockwave to stun them, and to give yourself a little more breathing room, you SSlam one, and four or five of the mobs go flying back a few yards. Think about the opening epic battle in Fellowship of the Ring, where Sauron is swinging his mace around knocking fools back. I want to do something like that, except with a shield.

Finally, ranged pulls are one of the things that I've always had to tell groups to treat very delicately, simply because the threat from my thrown weapon isn't going to be nearly enough to hold a mob if someone else in my group so much as farts sideways. How about something where our ranged attack has a lot more Oomph! A shotgun blast or a bow shot or a thrown dagger that hits our target in just the right place to piss it off. Because if you want to talk about fun, a pump-action 12 gauge blast to a ghoul's head is pretty high on the Testostero-meter.

And as has been echoed both here and on the WoW forums, making Shockwave a PBAoE would be a hoot.

So imagine this pull. You pull the hammer back on your rifle and plug a round into a mob, luring it and its dozen buddies in your direction. The crack of the blast is enough to keep all their attention. Once they reach you, you lay into them with TClaps and Devastates, Cleaving left and right. Things get a little hairy, so you (full of rage and power and almighty awesomeness) let loose a Shockwave and SSlam several mobs in front of you, popping them backwards to land on their keisters. Then, in that moment where everything is stunned, you see a loose mob making a break for your healer. In one quick, fluid motion, you yank out your thrown weapon and whip it into the mob's back so that it turns it's attention on you and comes charging.

Of course, your shield block is stopping everything and your heroic strikes, cleaves, and Tclaps are critting left and right for giggle-inducing amounts (because of all the Strength and [another fun addition] Agility the newly itemized tanking gear has). You're an Immovable Object, a wall Of Steel, and you layeth the smacketh down on their candy asses.

THAT... would be fun.

[Heartwood]

A couple other ideas:

Don't disable our abilities in raid situations. ie:
1) Taunt immune mobs. Let us be the hero that intervenes and taunts to save a raid member!
2) Spell reflect not working on spells or mobs (ie. Karazhan). I have this neat ability, but it doesn't work. Hmmm.

Generally, Prot Wars have little to no in-battle health recuperation (excluding health pots, warlock stones, or the temporary boost from last stand). This means that we start the fight and are at the mercy of killing something before our mitigation/avoidance allows the mob(s) to kill us. Some class-specific ability to heal some health would be nice. Maybe some type of kit we could 'craft' outside of combat, to use in-combat.

[Heartwood]

(Wish I could edit my posts to add in info! lol)

Another idea would be removing Shield Wall from the GCD as had been done with Spell Reflect. This is mostly removing a frustration from tanking as Prot War. This is our 'oh nuts!' last-second ability to avoid dying. And I can't count the number of times I've gone to use this ability only to be blocked out by the GCD and ended up in an unnecessary death.

[Mangea]

I really like Ghladum's Last Man Standing idea. And to bounce off Cider's idea of health regeneration, something along the lines of getting healed for a small % of the damage we do for a limited time would be good. Nothing as huge as what Blood spec Deathknights had, but a little something extra to help reduce the downtime in soloing and questing.

So to sum up some ideas so far:
- Shield Slam gets a knockback, either single target or small aoe, perhaps a 15% chance.
- Health regeneration for a limited time based on things like our damage output and/or how much rage we have at the time and/or what % our health is at at the time.
- For each party/raid member who dies, we could:
deal more damage/our armor value goes up/our Strength goes up/our Last Stand or Shield Wall cooldown is refreshed/Last Stand could be used again and stack for each death or remain active until combat ends. The damage increase per death could be greater in 5 man parties than in raids simply due to the disparity in group size.

[Mangea]

I really like Ghladum's Last Man Standing idea. And to bounce off Cider's idea of health regeneration, something along the lines of getting healed for a small % of the damage we do for a limited time would be good. Nothing as huge as what Blood spec Deathknights had, but a little something extra to help reduce the downtime in soloing and questing.

So to sum up some ideas so far:
- Shield Slam gets a knockback, either single target or small aoe, perhaps a 15% chance.
- Health regeneration for a limited time based on things like our damage output and/or how much rage we have at the time and/or what % our health is at at the time.
- High threat attack using ranged weapon.

- For each party/raid member who dies, we could:

• deal more damage
• increase our armor value
• increase our Strength
• refresh our Last Stand or Shield Wall cooldown
• use Last Stand again and stack it for each death or it could remain active until combat ends

Or any combination of these. Of course, the benefit we gain from each group member death would have to be smaller per death in a raid group than in a 5 man group. But you get the idea.

[Mangea]

Gah, can't edit or delete previous posts >.< Very sorry for the post spam, but I had another idea. Continuing on with the Last Man Standing idea, maybe every time a party or a raid member dies, the cooldowns on Challenging Shout, Shockwave and Last Stand are refreshed, Shockwave does 1.5x or 2x damage, and Last Stand's effects last until combat ends. Or instead of SW doing more damage, all the warrior's damage is increased by 10% or so. How's that sound?

[Ciderhelm]

The news forum can never be edited -- apologies. This is specifically so I can pull posts and turn them directly into news (such as Hypatias) without worrying about the content suddenly changing on me. There's no toggle to separate Thread editing from Reply editing at this time.

[Sangi]

- Health regeneration for a limited time based on things like our damage output and/or how much rage we have at the time and/or what % our health is at at the time.

An ability that regenerated health similar to how Shamanistic Rage regens mana would be really nice. But that is a 41 point talent so I doubt that it would be feasible for us.

[breaklance]

Stance Dancing to Fear
Real tanks dont need fear ward, lazy tanks like one though lol.

Multi-Tanking
While a lesser tank may have problems multitanking through Shattered Halls or Shadow Labs, doing so on a warrior with limited or no cc is an art-form.

Qual Danas Dailies
Grabing and kiting so many mobs to fill your quest in one fight and still haveing 5k health or more is fun.

World PvP
Having many a rogue try to kill me, mage try to Pom Pyro, and expecting me to die is laughable. Doing 2v2's while prot is funny too when it comes down to prot war vs physical dmg class.

But blizz these arnt fun
-The repair costs, even when i don't die.
-The incapability to grind, or make money effeciently to cover repairs(im only t4 and i still have 45g in repairs before anything is even yellow)
-2minute buffs for 5 people out of the entire raid.
-Too many tanks already in my opinion, most "serious progression guilds" run with 5 tanks total( Granted bigger guilds who have several sets of raiders have more, mine runs smoothly with 6, 4 wars 2 pallies, and usually works out without needing to sideline a tank on purpose). I'm in a t5 progression guild because i had to basically build it myself, after trying for weeks to get into a t5 or t6 progression guild. But maybe thats my craptacular server.
-Feeling useless in raids untill its bosstime.

-Grinding resist sets for yourself without any dps buddies.
-

[Rampart]

Something that can be found in many other MMORPGs is the ability to reflect physical attacks. Warriors already have something in the same genre of abilities with Retaliation, but it's just not the same. To be able to put up your shield and deflect damage point for point back on the attacker is hilariously fun. My thoughts lead towards being able to deflect rogue attacks. Now of course something like that would have to be balanced quite profusely, but it's an idea at least.

[Ioseb]

Warrior

Fun:
-Being the most important guy in the raid
-Having a difficult job(on some fights, I just afk after I engage mother.)
-Being prot. The few, the proud. I like to explore prot PvP and prot DPS.
-Highly reactive fights, where I actually have to decide what is the best course of action rather than follow the script. Lurker, alar, Illidari council, flames of azzinoth, bloodboil, etc.

Not fun:
-Collecting resist gear, but I hear they are fixing that.
-30s intercept in PvP, prot warriors gotta pwn face too!
-Soloing before I had full BT dps gear. Both because of down time and sub par damage.
-Other classes with bad theat/damage ratios or mechanics(warlocks)
-Having so many sets of tanking gear(unavoidable)


Would be fun:
-A ranged attack of some sort other than shoot
-More bosses that allow you to stop tanking for some parts of the fight to perform other tasks
-Don't reduce cooldowns of oh-shit buttons quite as much as is planned. Without the pressure of wanting to save them it really takes away some of the fun of even having them. They turn from oh shit buttons to routine order.
-Shield spikes effect shield slam... Oh pretty pretty please!

Blizzard, read the next few lines if nothing else!
-Something that allows prot specced classes to benefit more from food/bandages
-More procs and things on shields. Like shields with similar starts but cool/fun procs( sporeggar shield). Make them a little more than just stats. Think totems/librams/Idols. Maybe a wider array of enchants? Inscriptions?
-Just give is more cool little caveats, nothing ground breaking but fun stuff. Kinda like what engineering is getting with making any boots rocket boots or shooting webs or whatever.