Threat being a non issue....do you like?

[Dots]

Xav, I generally agree with you, especially the comment about 25 man raids. But right now there is no use for CC at all anywhere, everything that is not a boss simply gets AE'd by the whole raid. That is just dumbed down too much and quite boring.

[CSCase]

I'm totally cool with the idea that now, in addition to tanking we ALSO do some DPSing. An additional challenge would be great. But that's not what they've done, from what I have seen so far in live. What they've done is taken the all challenge out of actual tanking, and if you'd like, you may find some challenge in DPSing instead. I have a problem with that. If what I enjoyed doing most were DPSing, I would not be playing a prot warrior.

DPS is not tanking. It's a separate role distinct from tanking. One class may do both simultaneously, sure. But shouldn't both be interesting and challenging?

I have to confess here, though, that I am not a beta tester and I have seen nothing beyond level 70. Maybe the fact that all the content I'm seeing is not tuned properly for post 3.0 70s is giving me a skewed picture of tanking? I'd love to hear someone tell me that.

Just my 2 cents.

[Sparan]

Xav, I generally agree with you, especially the comment about 25 man raids. But right now there is no use for CC at all anywhere, everything that is not a boss simply gets AE'd by the whole raid. That is just dumbed down too much and quite boring.

This won't be the way of things in LK, in all likelihood. Sure Naxx will be pretty much a breeze, but I can't imagine blizz making content where you can just AE through the trash without a second thought. Strategic CC will be as important on new content as ever, the only change will be that once you outgear the content you don't have to talk one of your pallies into speccing back and forth so you can burn through trash a little faster. Also, in sunwell now sheeps and sleeps are useful primarily for filling in the holes that swipe and tclap don't cover. That one mob that runs through b/c nobody is paying as much attention can be CC'd until a tank can get to it. It's still a very useful tool at 70, imo.

[Xav]

Xav, I generally agree with you, especially the comment about 25 man raids. But right now there is no use for CC at all anywhere, everything that is not a boss simply gets AE'd by the whole raid. That is just dumbed down too much and quite boring.

That's a "problem" with the game / encounter / instance design though, not tanking mechanics or tanks in general. That can easily be fixed in latter instances by just making really punishing mobs that have abilities they grant the rest when active, etc etc. They've done it before, they can do it again.

Right now in WoTLK the only moderately threatening mob you want to "CC" is the Death Knight Warriors or whatever that do the whirlwind, 2-3 per pull, and you stun them during the WW.

I'd say the lack of emphasis on CC is simply to make all the introductory content in Wrath more accessible and easy, which is their plan.

[kirbyispink]

The AoE threat increase is just icing on the cake, and made to equalize tanks so Paladins and DK's aren't the only AOE capable tanks. I for one adored Shattered Halls and it's really where I went to hone my skills when I first started tanking seriously on my warrior (this was about a month after TBC launch, prior to the heroic nerfs).

I could tank SH heroic succesfully, all 5-7 mobs per pull. It was a blast and being able to do it efficiently and well was recognized and bettered tanks. While more people can now do such a thing with much, much less effort, it doesn't really change the greater point of the 3.0/tank changes. The raw threat output scaling, which was greatly improved.

I don't think tank damage is THAT important, sure I'll work to always maximize my damage without bringing more damage upon myself, and I'll question tanks not maximizing their own DPS within my raids.

I don't think AoE threat improvement is anything to get unhappy about either.

But I really feel strongly that the increase in our threat output was sorely needed to make the game more enjoyable for players on all levels.

It's not like I didn't try to do Shattered Halls as often as I can. The problem is not that place, it was other players who wouldn't let me do my job. DPS classes didn't really have to put that much effort in comparison to what tanks had to do to hold aggro, especially when the DPS outpaces TPS in terms of gear.

I agree that Shattered Halls was a great place to hone your abilities as a tank, but often, there was always that one member or two decked in Tier gear higher than mine that just wouldn't let up when I told them to give me a second.

Since I don't know what it's like at the higher levels of tanking, I guess I don't see just how much the improvement was sorely needed but from the sounds of the posts, it looks like TPS at the higher level was very frustrating.

As per tank damage, I was exaggerating a bit on how much damage we need to do. I really meant that it was more important to maximize our damage as tanks. I don't expect to be rolling into the top 10 if I were to join a 25-man raiding team. If I am, then obviously someone needs to learn how to DPS.

[Xav]

I think what's been said up to this point basically covers all tanking mindset origins. People are either going to see the threat changes as a benefit to their class, allowing them to use more abilities, feel more involved, and have a greater role. And some people are not going to ever see past the "I can just hit thunderclap repeatedly and make things hit me." It's a pity, but I think the replies themselves illustrate the enthusiasm and aptitude people have in their own class.

[Dreador]

I think what's been said up to this point basically covers all tanking mindset origins. People are either going to see the threat changes as a benefit to their class, allowing them to use more abilities, feel more involved, and have a greater role. And some people are not going to ever see past the "I can just hit thunderclap repeatedly and make things hit me." It's a pity, but I think the replies themselves illustrate the enthusiasm and aptitude people have in their own class.

I'm not quoting to add an educated response, I just think this had to be repeated.

[Dots]

That's a "problem" with the game / encounter / instance design though, not tanking mechanics or tanks in general.

It is partly a problem with tanking mechanics because AE threat is too high. If someone is hitting the wrong mob, I don't really see a reason why he shouldn't get aggro. Even DPS classes can be asked to use their brains during trash.
That is the only gripe I have with the way tanking works now.

[djiss]

There is still the whole issue of zerging instances that still troubles me about WoTLK

If you outgear a dungeon, you should be able to zerg it. And I'm pretty sure the tank in the video have T6+ gear, so he prolly already outgear the place. Remember, paladin were already doing so, the patch just allow us warrior to do same.

[CSCase]

On the official forums that's shortened to "l2p" and it basically means "if you disagree with me that must mean you are a poor player." In some cases it may contain varying amounts of truth but it doesn't really add much to a disussion. Thanks anyway!

[Shadevarr]

SH is where I have been going to work on my aoe skills. I pull really fast and usually clear the place in 30 minutes at most. With a lot of AoE to do I am commonly top on the damage meter, in less AoE intensive places I am in the middle of the DPS. This change has really brought out those who are skilled at their class and those who were getting raid invites based solely on class mechanics.

In other words why bring a 400dps tank when you can have a 800dps tank when they both wear the same gear?

[Darksend]

The AoE threat increase is just icing on the cake, and made to equalize tanks so Paladins and DK's aren't the only AOE capable tanks. I for one adored Shattered Halls and it's really where I went to hone my skills when I first started tanking seriously on my warrior (this was about a month after TBC launch, prior to the heroic nerfs).

I could tank SH heroic succesfully, all 5-7 mobs per pull. It was a blast and being able to do it efficiently and well was recognized and bettered tanks. While more people can now do such a thing with much, much less effort, it doesn't really change the greater point of the 3.0/tank changes. The raw threat output scaling, which was greatly improved.

for me the practice came much later in the game, after i had already been established as one of the guilds 2 main tanks. As a feral druid single target threat was stupid easy but even with swipe shadow labs and shattered halls had always pushed me pretty hard if the dps was doing stupid things.

When it came time for hyjal, our very 1st run ever was me, the warrior MT, and a fury warrior who would dps until an abom wave came, tank 1 abom, then go back to dpsing. We never used a prot pally until the place had been on farm for at least 6-7 months. Especially the Azgolar trash with only 2 tanks was extremly painful, but we always mangaged. Between stuns, seed happy warlocks, absolute lack of melee assist train, and neither of the tanks every being given an assist so nothing was ever marked, it was where i truly learned to aoe tank. (but the amount of warlocks that had to die for it would be a pretty long list)


and sparan, maybe you can FINALLY hold something over me? maybe? guess not, still bad! (next week im so dpsing on bloodboil and letting you solo tank it again)

both the sunwell guilds i have been in have for the most part run 2 melee groups with 2 enh shaman, when you get fury warriors with 2 BM hunters a feral druid and an enh shaman, i would have threat issues as a druid, i dont know how warriors did it. priests dotting off the pull on twins and seeing mind flays go into her as she was still running down to us, melee opening up immediately than the offtank getting the 1st conflag, you would be so far behind them it took miracles for me to catch up sometimes, then when sparan would get confounded, by the time he came out of it i couldnt stop attacking to let him catch up because there were 2 spriests and 3 rogues between us. DPS in sunwell guilds often time has no respect for tps, and even when they do its like, "o man im close, ill use rec anyway hope you can hold it"

Thanks for the indepth support Sparan - you really hit it on the head with your examples. I could have elaborated in the same way, infact this subject is something I'm rather passionate about! You were spot-on and and understand it all too well. Particularly the comment on the trash clears and how DPS can mash their 2222 button putting out over 4k sustained dps (lol, chain shadowbolt/fireball crits) while having a grand time on vent, meanwhile we're machinegunning our keyboard to try and save lives.

me on vent "KILL THE FING DIAMOND ALREADY" i see 10 shadowbolts go into star, i either go chase star and taunt it, but if i do when i turn back around 3 melee died kill diamond because taunts on cd. usually i let the warlocks die because me and sparan dont like them anyway miright sparan ?

[Kazeyonoma]

It is partly a problem with tanking mechanics because AE threat is too high. If someone is hitting the wrong mob, I don't really see a reason why he shouldn't get aggro. Even DPS classes can be asked to use their brains during trash.
That is the only gripe I have with the way tanking works now.

AoE threat is too high RIGHT NOW, for Dungeons.

Honestly, are you deck'd out in epics running a heroic and saying you aren't overgeared? For the content level you are at, I think you'll find this to be the opposite, and why should we HAVE to struggle for dumb dps. It doesn't change the efficiency of FF. All it means is that retarded mage isn't going to make your entire instance a living hell.

[jere]

Edit: I feel this is also a good time to say that I get annoyed in our 25 man raids @ 80 when other tanks "help" tank trash pulls. I'm perfectly capable of doing it all myself, and I like the abilities I get to use doing so. It's really a blast, really involved, and a huge improvement over what we were capable of pre-3.0.

Welcome to the world of the pally.

I feel the same way many times. I understand the desire for other tanks to do that, but it does get annoying if you are having fun or need the mana/rage.

[Sparan]

It is partly a problem with tanking mechanics because AE threat is too high. If someone is hitting the wrong mob, I don't really see a reason why he shouldn't get aggro. Even DPS classes can be asked to use their brains during trash.
That is the only gripe I have with the way tanking works now.

A test: enter a raid instance and try tanking a boss using only tclap. Did that work? If so, please share your secrets. If not, feel a little silly at thinking that if a dpser focuses the wrong target that tclap still managed to outthreat them.

usually i let the warlocks die because me and sparan dont like them anyway miright sparan ?

そうだ。

[Lore]

Only having to CC one or two mobs per pull >>>>>>>> having to meticulously mark targets and make sure absolutely everyone has their shape figured out and knows what to do, when to start casting, etc.

[Xav]

On the official forums that's shortened to "l2p" and it basically means "if you disagree with me that must mean you are a poor player." In some cases it may contain varying amounts of truth but it doesn't really add much to a disussion. Thanks anyway!

The point is, I'm disagreeing while providing examples of situations where you can still excel as a tank, do far more than average, and still have a fun and challenging role. While greatly reducing or eliminating the tedium of sustaining threat.

If you need more examples of situations in WoTLK or even current 70 raids where tanking is still engaging, I'll share. Actually, I'll just write more up anyway.

Felmyst: Tanking both Felmyst and all of the Skeleton adds. Involves liberal use of of basic rotation abilities, Thunderclaps at the right time to hit the most amount of mobs while they're still "spawning" from the gas, and Warbringer charges to get to the other area. I already enjoyed doing this prior to 3.0, and rounding them up for our paladin, now I can do it all myself.

M'uru: Sentinel tank. I can tank all of the Void Spawns, and the sentinel itself. I run around the room picking up the new Sentinels while having a bunch of spawns on me. Obviously, the spawns have an AOE shadow bolt volley, so how do I pick up sents without getting a "side" completely blanketed in shadow bolt volleys? I turn and Shockwave stun all the spawns, charge to the sentinel, and then run back so the Spawns don't have time to follow me and volley the raid. Then I continue with thunderclap, and spell reflect + a normal rotation on the Sentinel.

There's also a strategy warriors are capable of doing in Sarth 25 hardmode that is very involved, different, and fun, but I really don't want to share it because that's the only bit of hard content that will be in at release and that guilds will be striving for a first kill of. If it works, and I'm pretty confident it will, you'll be damn sure I'll have a video of it illustrating how awesome it is.

Trust me, tanking can and will still leave plenty of room to show how much better you are than the rest. All I'm saying is you CAN succeed by doing the bare minimum, but you can also do so much more to impress and help your raid.

[Cleonicus]

This is from my prespective as a T4 tank and my two Kara runs from this weekend that might make some people feel better about the new "ease" of tanking.

The first Kara run I did was on Friday. I joined a pug with my holy priest so that I could get a preview on how easy it was. Our two tanks were warriors that had the appropriate gear for Kara. They did a fine job through the instance and we had no trouble with anything. Then we got to Prince. Suddenly, our main tank had difficulty keeping aggro. Our top two DPSers went down early because they each drew aggro at separate times. I know these weren't the greatest tanks in the world, but their difficulties can be an example that tanking is not necessarily easy now.

Then again...My guild's weekly Kara run was on Sunday. We have most of the gear from Kara that we need but lack the number of players to progress. Kara was a blast this week. We were AoE tanking most pulls, even grabbed a couple of the elite packs in the dining area. During Prince, I usually spend the whole time watching my bars so I can keep up Shield Wall, Thunder Clap and Demo Shout, and stick to my aggro rotation because our Boomkin starts riding my threat. However, on Sunday, I ended up with around 200K threat, and our Boomkin had about 85K. I know I could have done better too. I had a friend pop by during the fight so I was not completely focused. I was loosely following revenge -> HS/Shield Slam with devastate thrown in when S&B didn't proc. And, I wasn't using Shield Wall everytime to up my Shield Slams.

So from my weekend experience, I would say that we seem to have three tanking tiers (good-high dps/average-holds aggro/bad-loses aggro) as opposed to two tier (good-holds aggro/bad-loses aggro).

[Malificient]

To bring in a slightly different perspective -- my main is a priest, raided shadow from before TBC through all of MH and 5/9 BT, when I stopped raiding due to the birth of my daughter.

In all of my raiding experience as a shadow priest, by far the most frustrating aspect was needing a tank. I read the guides, participated in online forums, min/maxed my gear, talents, enchants, professions (to the point of switching twice), everything. And due partly to broken threat scaling, partly to broken class mechanics for shadow priests, I could almost never hit my max DPS cap. Almost every single fight, there would come a point where I had to drop SW from my rotation, or let VE fall off, or sometimes even drop to just dots + flay to avoid any bad crits. I would ride the tank's threat lead to the point of screaming hysterics, and I was still purposely slowing my rotations and dropping GCDs to avoid extra burst. If I went into heroics with anything less than one of our guild MTs, I had to swap back into my old gear with less damage, or else I'd spend half the run staring off into space while I waited for my threat to drop a little. In a fight like Gurtogg, I really felt like a wasted spot, if not an outright liability.

With the threat changes, not only am I having more fun on my alt prot warrior (which I adore), but my shadow priest is more fun. I can go all out even in a heroic, without facing my immediate death. With Vigilance, that oft-maligned prot talent, even under-geared tanks can stay well ahead of me.

In short -- it's not just the tanks that are now getting to play 'kill the bad guy' to the best of their abilities. Almost all of the DPS classes I've talked to have expressed their enthusiasm about being able to actually push the envelope, use all of those abilities, and really see the numbers rack up.

[Triank]

I personally feel with the threat changes single target based at least has made good tanks even better. And tanks who might not have been so great at threat are better now.

I still use my rotations and not a faceroll. I love putting vigilance on a dps warrior or boomking druid.

I am in beta and only went to 78 with my warrior. I really wanted to get into naxx and test it out but just ran out of time to get it done when i have so much to get done in live being my guilds GM/Raid leader and what not.

Xav since you have been in beta and tank alot it seems in raids perhaps you can answer this.

Atm if I am playing/tanking like i normally do with rotations and maximizing everything I do the only class that can come close to me is a hunter. We have 2 hunters that can pull down 2800dps on fight like teron and najentus in BT the tank and spanks so to speak. Fights like these where locks and other high dps classes really used to challenge me if I was not on my game of TPS. Some classes have seem to take a hit with the new taletn trees while some others are kind of middle of the road. I attribute this to the trees being made and balanced for level 80 some classes are just performing better now and things will level out at 80.

What are you seeing at level from dps classes? You made mention that you cant just cruise control to victory so I am assming that once other classes are 80 the margin of threat is significantly closer then what it is now.

I know they made threat easier for us but from a logical stand point it wouldnt seem like they would want to remove the race between tanks tps and dps. So at level 80 once people are getting new gear and running level 80 specs will we see good dps and good tanks still competing? Thus still allowing the good tanks to shine and the middle of the road tanks perhaps still struggling back and forth with dps.

It all revolves around balance I wouldnt imagine that if tanks TPS is so far and above dps they would bring it down some to still have that potential of raid wipes and what not from a tank not paying attention or reckless dps pulling aggro. While it is the tanks job to hold aggro ... just like back in EQ it is the dps job to make sure they dont pull. It is an equal partnership imo on riding the fine line between speed and chaos.

I hope this makes since im typing this out as i run out the door lol.