Tanking Topics #3: Health

[Stearns]

Well this is a pretty interesting discussion, though it does risk falling into outraged qq at times. You can feel it tottering on the edge in some people's posts.

Its ironic that warriors & pallies feel a little bit left behind in terms of EH these days. I think its a valid discussion because I'd like to stack druids & Dks for progression myself - I dont see any advantages to bringing warriors or pallies. However, if I had no choice, I'm sure we'd do just fine. I still trust skill over spec.

You're gonna have a hard time lowering the health multiuplier of druids however. I dont mind if they do it, I suppose, as long as warriors have to give up their shields. Seriously though, short of making all tanking classes feel the same and play the same, there has to be differences. I'd imagine Blizzard are interested in ways of designing boss encounters that dont require guilds to stack tanks with the highest EH to progress the fastest. This solution is a lot easier than changing tank mechanics. They are clearly aware that a higher health pool is potentially problematic for progression guilds looking to stack tank classes.

But, lest we forget, progression tends to be by far the smallest part of the game experience for most of us. How long was our naxx "progression" for the best guilds? 2 days? A week? How long was BT progression? A lot of top guilds one-shotted most of the bosses in there, the very first time. How about Sarth+3? How long did you stuggle with that? A night, maybe 2? My point is that on the one-hand, people boast about how easily they clear content, while on the other, talk about needing to stack the right classes for a hardcore progression edge, and how things are "not fair", how this class needs nerfing or buffing or rebalancing in some way.

Which top end progression guild is failing because you dont have druids or DKs? Did Cider give up his primo MT tank spot to a druid or DK, so you could progress through Sarth that much faster? Did we hear him ruefully admit on the strat video that he respecced DPS for this because warrior tanks suck at the fight? I'm joking to make a point here: it just doesnt happen in the real world. Did they get behind in progression? I doubt it. So I cant take the overall motive for this thread too seriously because I dont actually see any top guilds having real issues with this.

Back in the days of ZA bear runs, I was categorically unable to get a bear. Why? Because the 2 pallies in my guild went together on a bear run each week with another guild group, and I didnt know any other skilled pallies. My only choice was to pug a prot pally each week. So, as a non-pally tank, I gave up on ever getting a bear. I also lost interest in ZA because it was a gimmick instance. It wasnt about skill - it was merely about knowing a good prot pally and working it with the same group each week until you got it down. When that happens, it's bad for the game because entire instances get neglected or shunned. There's nothing in the game like that today for any of the tank classes. Maybe a little harder, or a little easier for some classes. But there are no hard class barriers to success like there used to be.

[Liar]

Regardless the move toward debunking EH was something that started to happen here even before WotLK.

That blog post isn't "debunking EH" per se. It says that because you meet the required EH without gems, you might as well put anything you want in there from avoidance to stamina to... well these two. <_<
I was a heavy avoidance whore back in T6 as well because frankly, if you meet the require EH it makes sense to do that. But nonetheless, you have to beat the EH requirements first and if the designers are too lenient with that then the tanks with the innately higher EH and MEH like Druids and DKs can convert surplus EH/MEH points that Warriors and Paladins just don't have into avoidance or threat or both.
And let's be honest, gearing for avoidance worked just better before diminishing returns.

[Ludiaro]

I like the idea of block value reduces magical dmg taken, as in raids with full buffs and the eternal earthsiege diamond on meta socket on head, i stand on 2k BV. So in terms of what i think it cold be better on the multiplier would be a "2x" cause not all tanks will gear towards Bv and will sit around 1.5k, and the average dmg difference taken in this calculations of Xav are around 3k-4k. or we could get an ability or a new talent that would give you a chance (and not a constant reduction, more like the same %, and it would only get constant after the block cap) to actually block magic dmg and still give the multiplier "2x" on Bv. So we wouldn't be too much of the same still giving some edge on druids/Dk's with good health pools, and putting us at the same lvl as druids/Dk's with average stamina pools.
Personally i wouldn't like to see paladins getting the HP nerf since i think it wouldn't be as fair cause warriors have a few for mitigation abilities as well as slightly more powerful. Where is see the main difference is the threat managing as they have few more difficulties.

[Roarc]

Consistently basing damage of most special attacks on a percentage of maximum health is actually a very effective solution. It is very similar in effect to putting diminishing returns on health (in terms of time-to-live), without actually affecting visible health values. Aside from that, it can also actually start to penalize you appropriately if you invest too many stats in EH at the cost of avoidance (because you'll need a lot more healing -- not just in terms of mana cost but also in terms of the time it takes to put you back at full health).

I'm not so sure of that. % attacks cause other issues instead. I mean say a fire-breath hits for 80% of your current health…

- Gear might be less of an issue unless other mechanics of the fight is a gear-check.

- A tank geared towards stamina will be hit for far more in burst situations. An example would be a 60K HP tank will be hit for 48K, a 40K HP tank will be hit for 32K thus the higher HP tank require 1 more heal (or similar) to get topped off.

- On the other hand, say the boss does physical fixed damage number and % based attack looking at the above one tank ends up with 12K HP and the other 8K HP. The former might be able to soak the next attack where the second has more avoidance and chance of avoiding the attack all together or will need healing ASAP (and less to to get topped off). Both stress the raid in different ways.

- The massive HP pool of some classes would just be "for show" then however. Not sure this is the best end-solution, but perhaps not a bad one.

So yes, the above is a solution but I'm not sure if it wouldn't just cause more issues than anything to try to exploit it.

Diminishing returns on HP wouldn't be the same thing entirly but it would be a mean to normalize HP across classes yes. The above is a mean to normalize damage intake instead, much like us warriors wouldn't mind a normalization on rage-intake... Off-topic sorry

Why risk it, and why complicate a fight when you can just the class it was designed for?

This is what we want to move away from I truly hope. I just think blizzard could put other gimmicks into fights to suit all classes.

- Let warriors / pallies / [insert class here]*to have the ability to spell-reflect / [insert talent here] magic attacks that either reducing damage in-take (burst) or perhaps sets the boss into another state of mind (fury / frenzy - swings rapidly or what ever).

- Design encounters with options for ALL tank-classes in mind. The dancing of the Twilight Torment de-buff was actually a GOOD solution for all tanks to manage the event. Tank A dances, Tank B relies on personal CD's and Tank C just soaks it all and Tank D is the same class as A but relies on the raid to put CD's on him. At the moment we're stuck with B and D which isn't fair to the no CD's classes (and the soakers still have an advantage with external CD's due to the larger HP pool).

- Rethink how events work even if I don't think this will happen for all new encounters. Kil'Jaeden was to me a bit "innovative" in terms of how to deal with an encounter, yet those can be hard since they stress the raid alot (and we all know Blizzard also wants to please the average Joe). Illidan, given it's MT gimmick, had a very well though way of dealing with things in other parts of the fight. Same goes for Vashj where you have large portions of the event not being MT centric (and as far as I know any class can manage to tank her). Also Gurtogg Bloodboil is a good type of event that doesn't exactly favor a certain class (we had issues with Paladin threat back in the day but that's a different topic since now I think they beat Warriors).

In the end, they can design fights that have gimmicks that aren't class based. Let the tanks deal with threat wipes, taunting at different phases or playing debuffs, staying 2:nd on aggro etc. Introduce things like Malygos or Sartharion where you need to tank AND be aware of your environment. Void zones, sparks, fire walls etc. These type of events work for any class given the event also caters classes short-comings (all tanks need damage in-take or Warriors / Pallies have a hard time off-tanking for instance).

The last two parts might drift a bit off-topic but it's all part of the game.

Regards
Thugs

[Roarc]

Back in the days of ZA bear runs… as a non-pally tank, I gave up on ever getting a bear. I also lost interest in ZA because it was a gimmick instance. It wasnt about skill…

I'll give you it was easier with a paladin as a tank, but it was very much possible to achieve with any combination of tanks as far as I know. I did it warrior / warrior, warrior / druid and warrior / paladin. Our first successful run was with a warrior and druid even and I think we where realm first (as least horde first). It might be it required more skill from these to people than if they'd rolled a Paladin, but it was still fully doable and sadly the above can't be said about the current end-game gimmick however to the same degree.

Problem in TBC was Single Target tanking vs AoE tanking, problems in Wrath are other things.

Regards
Thugs

[Roana]

- Gear might be less of an issue unless other mechanics of the fight is a gear-check.

Not really. Even now, "tank killer attacks" generally do not kill the tank by itself. They generally kill in conjunction with other attacks. If ALL the damage were percentage-based, then you would have a case, but having 20k instead of 30k health means that you'd be left with 4k instead of 6k health after an 80% attack, so the next attack for 5k health will kill one tank, but not the other. What you're effectively doing is to reduce the value of stamina, but you don't eliminate it.

- A tank geared towards stamina will be hit for far more in burst situations. An example would be a 60K HP tank will be hit for 48K, a 40K HP tank will be hit for 32K thus the higher HP tank require 1 more heal (or similar) to get topped off.

This is a feature, not a bug, assuming a similar gearing level. Obviously, to (1) prevent exploits and (2) allow farming of old content, one may wish to implement an absolute floor and an absolute ceiling, respectively, for percentage-based attacks. I.e., an attack would do M% max health damage, with a minimum of L points of damage and a maximum of H points of damage.

- The massive HP pool of some classes would just be "for show" then however. Not sure this is the best end-solution, but perhaps not a bad one.

The massive HP pool of some classes is in a large part due to carefully optimized gear/gemming/enchanting/profession choices. I have no problem whatsoever with discouraging this degree of one-dimensional minmaxing. I do not think it is something that Blizzard really likes, either.

That said, I'm not overly enthusiastic about the approach myself, but for the time being it would be one of the less intrusive ones in terms of how much it affects existing mechanics. Eventually, if Blizzard wishes to keep high-end bleeding edge raiding a competitive environment, then they will have to go for some normalization of mitigation capabilities among tank classes.

[Liar]

In the end, i just hope that tanking continues to require some level of skill - as opposed to just requiring JC + prof#2, all stam trinks, and sitting there with leet healers.
The old implementation of caster tanks (locks on illidan, mages on council) provided progression fights challenge with non-physical damage dealing bosses. challenges of flame tanking by being def and FR capped.

Any boss where you just stand around and take the hits is boring. This didn't really change. Popping CDs on Brutallus is not challenging either. You got your pre-planned set of CDs that you pop when you decided to beforehand. Actually, popping CDs reactively is part of the fun and we actually gained something here: SW is off the GCD finally (raise your hand if you used Last Stand over Shield Wall as preferred OH SHIT button because it was off the GCD and waiting for SW too get off the GCD could lead to your death; I know I did. Heck, I didn't bind SW until they took it off the GCD).
Flame tanking was fun not because of the gear preparation (although admittedly I did enjoy shuffling gear around to get a bit of a boost on health whenever I got an upgrade in my normal tanking set and tried to fit it into my FR set while staying crit immune) but because you had to dodge shit. Alot of shit. While the flames were blocking your view. That stuff was good fun. Tanking a side on M'uru was also a lot of fun because it was so unforgiving. Miss one stun or interrupt or fumble a GCD and you risk death or losing aggro. Now that threat is easier, I guess that option of game design is gone. Shame about that.

A questions I have:
The predicted HP numbers, have you taken things like much debated gun slott of warriors into context here? Also, have you check the actually EH and MEH figures between the classes and not just the raw HP numbers?

The gun slot is included as static increase of 13% Sta per tier like every other slot.

Jayde is usually our math guy but I'll try and hope I don't mess up (though be sure to check my please just in case). :P
The idea is simple, try to figure out how much unmitigated damage a tank can take before he drops dead.
EH = Health x Armor mod x Stance mod
MEH = Health x Stance mod (x guaranteed resist chance)

I'll use rounded numbers from the OP to make things a bit easier. These are values just for T7:


Warrior(EH)= 42 600/(0.9 [D-Stance] x 0.306 [Armor Red]) = 154 700
Warrior(MEH)= 42 600/0.84 [Imp D-Stance] = 50 700

Paladin(EH)= 43 700/(0.91 x 0.31) = 154 900
Paladin(MEH)= 43 700/0.85 = 51 400

DK(EH)= 46 200/0.275 = 168 000
DK(MEH)= 46 200/0.85 = 54 400

Druid(EH)= 53 100/(0.2855 x 0.88) = 211 400
Druid(MEH)= 53 100/0.88 = 60 340

Let these numbers think in for a moment.

Druid(EH) = 211 400
Warrior(EH) = 154 700
Difference: 37%

Druid(MEH)= 60 400
Warrior(MEH)=50 700
Difference: 19%

Keep in mind that this is just for T7, the Druid will probably pull ahead even more with better gear like T10. I hope that now everyone who thought "but hey, it works now, why should I care for later" can see the problem.

This is not including CDs by all means, so DKs have the potential to even outdo Druids here (but then it isn't strictly MEH/EH anymore and you'd have to include the mitigation blocking offers).
Think about it though, imagine a Brutallus type of boss where you have to swap tanks every 20-30 secs. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to know which tank would dominate that: DKs. They can pop one CD every tanking phase while other tanks, especially Paladins, are boned. Warriors atleast have Shield Block every 40 secs and Druids Barskin every 60.

So yeah, both Paladins and Warriors (and possibly Druids unless they have so much base EH/MEH that they would laugh at us having to use CDs :P) need more/shorter cooldowns (and in the case of Paladins, they need one to begin with).

[Darksend]

Back in the days of ZA bear runs, I was categorically unable to get a bear. Why? Because the 2 pallies in my guild went together on a bear run each week with another guild group, and I didnt know any other skilled pallies. My only choice was to pug a prot pally each week. So, as a non-pally tank, I gave up on ever getting a bear. I also lost interest in ZA because it was a gimmick instance. It wasnt about skill - it was merely about knowing a good prot pally and working it with the same group each week until you got it down. When that happens, it's bad for the game because entire instances get neglected or shunned. There's nothing in the game like that today for any of the tank classes. Maybe a little harder, or a little easier for some classes. But there are no hard class barriers to success like there used to be.

we ran it with me main tanking and a fury warrior offtanking, most times we did not even have a paladin at all although i will admit a holy pally made things a lot easier and not just to consecrate but bop, never had any issues

it was the same with heroics, pugs always wanted paladins to aoe tank heroics, they would see a paladin and a druid in the group (i always ran heroics with my paladin friend) and they always asumed i was healing and he was tanking. People would leave sometimes when they got there and saw me tanking but stayed because of the guild tag above our heads. At the end of the run they would be like WOW i had no idea a druid could tank like that

Classes were never incapable of doing things, it became the general mindset of the community that you NEEDED a paladin for heroics and ZA so other tanks just stopped trying.

Well this is different, in this case those classes flat out CANNOT tank sarth, i know graf and myself have tanked the 25 as warrior and druid but thats 25 man, you have enough healers to split them into portals and kill adds every time they spawn, in 10 man you need a cooldown for as many as 10 straight fully buffed breaths

That is not the mindset of the community telling you you cannot tank it, that is a feature of the class that can tank it that sets them appart

[Liar]

And just to throw in my idea on how to give Warriors a spell mitigation ability (copy and paste from another post):

So far I have seen two major suggestions thrown around on how to give Warriors some low-CD spell mitigation:

1) Blocking having an effect on spell damage.
2) Spell Reflection offering a % reduction on magical damage while the buff is up (usually 20%).

And before I read this thread I was all for 2) because... it made sense. It's a short CD and it's our trademark move that sets us apart from the other tanks. It also gives SR a more consistent effect whereas currently it's an all-or-nothing scenario (16k reflects in Maly P2 is one, then you have bosses that shoot 4k Shadowbolts in your face and SR does absolutely nothing for no apparent reason at all). But like I said, after reading this, I had an idea for:

3) Spell Reflection offering a % reduction on magical damge based on your Block Value (say, 10% of your BV so you get a 10% reduction on magical damage with 1000 BV - numbers are obviously up for discussion).

The advantages over 1): It is not tied to Block Rating. It's not RNG based which is just the thing we need. We need consistency which is what SR offers us.

The advantages over 2): It scales for one. Also, it's fun because it's something you can gear for and you can combine it with different CDs on top. What if there was a boss that did moderate magical damage every ~10 secs and massive damage every minute? DKs can mitigate that one with AMS (-75% magical damage taken), Druids can Barkskin through it and us Warriors could pop Shield Block, possibly a Block Value trinket on top and Spell Reflect through it. Maybe it's just me, but I think that would be a fun way of giving Warriors moderate magical damage mitigation every 10 secs and massive mitigation once a minute (well, once every 40 secs to be precise).
It works for physical damage already, so why not?

Like I said, numbers are up for discussion and it highly depends on what they do with our health later on.

[Liar]

That is not the mindset of the community telling you you cannot tank it, that is a feature of the class that can tank it that sets them appart

Having done successful ZG runs with both Prot Warrior (MT)/Fury Warrior (OT/DPS) and Prot Warrior (MT or OT/DPS depending the fight [Prot DPS was actually competitive back then])/Prot Paladin (MT) I have to agree that both works. However, having a Paladin made it easier (it didn't have to be a Prot Paladin, a Holy Paladin consecrating on trash worked just as well) by far. This has nothing to do with community perception, it's simple logic.
Having to wait a few secs on AoE on mobs and/or risking ripping aggro is worse than not having to wait and not ripping aggro. I absolutely loved the challenge that Heroic Shattered Halls was back then and I encouraged AoE as Warrior tank but I am not fooling myself: while I was good at AoE, my Paladin alt in blues was better.

You're gonna have a hard time lowering the health multiuplier of druids however. I dont mind if they do it, I suppose, as long as warriors have to give up their shields. Seriously though, short of making all tanking classes feel the same and play the same, there has to be differences.

You want to keep your health advantage on Druids? Sure, that's possible, but then their armor has to drop below that of Paladins and Warriors so they end up at the same EH. Would you prefer that option or having Druid health dropped and armor values kept the same? Both are flavor and both will play differently. It would make Blocking for Warriors/Paladins more efficient for example.
But yeah, Druids can't have both highest armor and highest health in the game. This is not going to work.

[Machus]

I agree with Lionheart and Labguy23 on page 5 of this thread. There are two core problems:

1. Equalizing Magical Effective Health
All tank classes have reasonably similar (Physical) Effective Health. We may have varying HP, but a lot of compensating stats (armor, stances) or abilities (cooldowns, debuffs) make tanks fairly well matched for tanking bosses with physical damage.

The issue is that Magical Effective Health is just HP, since armor has no effect and nobody uses resistance gear, and that is both un-fun and un-balanced. It's un-fun for the tank to sit there and take the damage helplessly like a naked noob, or to slog to farm five different sets of "Lousy Gear of the Right Type of Resistance" like they did for MC, BWL, and AQ40.

As already mentioned, the best solution for that would be to re-itemize leather and plate tanking gear with a unified Magic Resistance stat (reliable against all schools) without additional itemization costs. Tank gear should just have some varying amount of Magic Resistance, like it has, say, Dodge Rating. A tank should always walk around with a decent amount of MEH, but should tune their gear for more MEH or EH just as they tuned in the Burning Crusade for more Threat or EH. Putting more Magic Resistance on shields or other class-specific slots would help equalize MEH between classes.

2. Making average damage intake matter
The other, bigger, core issue is that EH (and therefore MEH) are the only important stats for progression. That became even more severe after 3.0 since until that time Threat was at least sometimes important for progression. But damage reduction through avoidance and blocking isn't important for progression, and that's the core issue, since classes that have "points" spent in those two areas will be at a disadvantage as raid tanks.

One answer to this is to "fix" the healers, by nerfing them so that they are mana limited rather than (or as well as) being GCD limited, so that in turn the average damage reduction of the tank matters for progression. This sounds promising in some ways, but it's also hard to balance and make it fun for all concerned. Here are some issues that would come up if the healer's mana became a factor, as it was in early raiding.

• Most raids can vary the composition of healers/DPS. Tuning would work well if the total DPS * HPS stress the raid, but badly if the answer can be "Just bring more healers" or more DPSers.
• It's very un-fun if the raid is killing the boss just fine but then, with the boss at 10% or 5% the healers run out of mana and you wipe. A guild in this position is likely to just keep wiping, rather than change tank type to fix the problem.
• Healers and caster DPS do instances too, and it's a good development that all now have decent mana regen and can zoom through instances without mana breaks. Nobody would like mana breaks to come back.

What other ways would there be to make average damage reduction matter in a progression tank? I think the only alternative would be to make common the situations where the healers can't heal for short periods because they are silenced, separated, or magically prevented in some way. If it's part of a tank's job to survive these situations, we move from stacking EH to valuing both EH and mitigation/avoidance.

The problem is that for this to work, you need avoidance to matter. For avoidance to matter you need frequent, physical attacks, so that statistics work to turn random hist and misses into stable average damage. And if you have frequent physical attacks, block is just too easy to stack and make the warrior or pally tank overpowered. The core issue then is that block and avoidance are incompatible for the purpose of balance, and the only current alternative is to de-value both in favor of EH.

The best I can propose about that is to take away passive blocking, or the possibility to gear and talent for it, from both warriors and pallies so that our avoidance and blocking cooldowns can be admitted into the balancing equation, and so that average damage reduction and on-cooldown damage reduction can become as important as EH when it comes to progression.

[Alent]

The advantages over 2): It scales for one. Also, it's fun because it's something you can gear for and you can combine it with different CDs on top. What if there was a boss that did moderate magical damage every ~10 secs and massive damage every minute? DKs can mitigate that one with AMS (-75% magical damage taken), Druids can Barkskin through it and us Warriors could pop Shield Block, possibly a Block Value trinket on top and Spell Reflect through it. Maybe it's just me, but I think that would be a fun way of giving Warriors moderate magical damage mitigation every 10 secs and massive mitigation once a minute (well, once every 40 secs to be precise).
It works for physical damage already, so why not?

And the paladin just eats it because we haven't any 1 min CDs. Go go "hand of spell warding".

The idea is sound but I'd make two arguments about changing the way spike damage works in general:

#1: The kel'thuzad fight got it right. Tank survival was interrupt centric. Melee got to help the tank stay alive. I'm all for making more fights where the melee have to "save resources" to help the tank survive. It makes for a better "skill check" than the present model of "ohai, don't stand in the fire. Yes I know you've been raiding for 5 years and know not to stand in the fire, but we're still making sure you're not retarded because for all we know you got hit on the head in a car crash and now you are retarded."

#2: I'm all for Roana's % based damage abilities, and would suggest further adding to it with the notion of % based attack strings that the entire raid would have to watch for to pitch in during. precasting/panic heals from the healers, interrupts from dps, intervenes from warriors of all spec, hand of sacrifice from pallies, etc. I was just thinking last night about the idea of a boss using the "nullify" attack from AQ, followed in 1.5 seconds by a 16K nuke, as a scripted attack chain. Burst healing under pressure, etc.

#3: I'm also in favor, of the addition of a "feint" type ability for tanks. not the threat reduction (Although it might be a solid idea to leave it attached), but rather, an ability which reduced aoe damage by x% for x seconds as a short CD survival button for things like sarth breath.

The retard check is over, 99% of the game failed. Can we get some skill checks, please?

[Hypatia]

Just to be quite clear the subject is sewn up: In response to the question of whether it's a good idea to drop socket bonuses in favor of stamina gems in all sockets...

I may be on record as one of the biggest proponents of aiming for high values of avoidance, but it's worth noting that I never ever gemmed for anything except stamina in BC--my avoidance preference was in preferring items with slightly higher avoidance to items with slightly higher stamina in the same gear level, and more importantly, it was in opposition to blindly choosing to use then-recent badge gear that had huge stamina values and very poor secondary stats.

Right now I have more mixed gemming, but I expect to move closer to pure stamina once Ulduar comes out--most likely with a mix of expertise still in. Right now, there's only one fight requiring major HP optimization in the game, and we let one of our DK tanks handle that one for obvious reasons.


As for the meat of the present discussion: I'm sure Blizzard has their eye on this stuff, but it never hurts for the community to discuss things out loud. We may be a million monkeys tapping away at typewriters, but there's always a chance we'll spark an idea in some developer's head that they wouldn't have had on their own.

Clearly, we all want tanks to be on a reasonably even playing field. Those of us who've been around the block know how annoying it is when one class is a clearly superior choice, or when a gimmick fight forces the use or non-use of one class or another. I imagine druids would be much happier if there was real parity between classes (even if it means flavor lost) if it also means that there'll never be Shear-style shenanigans again.

And, of course, it's worth remembering for the most casual folks: this actually has the biggest impact on you, even though we frame the discussion in terms of "progression". Specifically: the biggest, baddest-assed guilds on the planet will always have whatever tank they need. They can recruit. They can roll up a new one, level it, and gear it super quickly if they have to. They can afford to use the absolute best choice class and gear for every fight.

Guilds and players with less resources need to be more concerned, though. We can't afford to or don't want to change classes on a whim. Telling a good friend "Sorry, we can't take you--we absolutely need someone of a different class in this fight" is not a good feeling at all.

And: people on "top" of the totem pole of health love need to be concerned, too. The nerf bat bounces up and down as the developers try to figure out how to make things work and be reasonably well balanced. If you're in first place one day, chances are good that you'll get bonked down too far when they try to correct, and you'll land in last. That up-and-down doesn't benefit anybody: far better, if it can be managed, is identifying the real problem that has to be solved, and planning a strategy around solving that.


That's my feeling, anyway. It's tough. It's painful. It's worrisome, because you look at things and think "God, I'm not sure I want stuff changing." But... that's the nature of the beast.

Anyway, the more ideas and thought experiments we can pound out as informed players, the more time the devs have to make things that actually work. Trust me, looking at somebody else's math and saying "hmm, it's not quite right, because they don't realize X, but I can work with it and fix it" is a lot faster than having to come up with a boatload of fresh mathematical models in the first place.

[Oiysters]

Percentage based attacks have their place and time for sure but I'm not sure that's a long term solution this this would put high HP pools very much at the bottom of the pit.

Agree with this. Percentage-based attacks are essentially a serious nerf to druid tanking viability that would have to be offset somehow. Otherwise we will have (completely justified) months of QQ from druids about how it's not fair that all tanking classes can tank any boss but we suck as add tanks. Currently we do suck as add tanks for progression content, but we have an advantage on bosses. You can't take away the thing that makes us viable without giving us something else to make us viable.

I like the idea of making shield block work on magical damage. It would make the proper balancing of Savage Defense even more important however, given the massive size of the bear armor nerf incoming in 3.1.

I also like the idea of nerfing the HP multiplier of bear form, if and only if they compensate for that nerf by rolling back the agi -> dodge nerf to up our avoidance to warrior/pally levels and giving us equivalent cooldowns.

[Darksend]

Having done successful ZG runs with both Prot Warrior (MT)/Fury Warrior (OT/DPS) and Prot Warrior (MT or OT/DPS depending the fight [Prot DPS was actually competitive back then])/Prot Paladin (MT) I have to agree that both works. However, having a Paladin made it easier (it didn't have to be a Prot Paladin, a Holy Paladin consecrating on trash worked just as well) by far. This has nothing to do with community perception, it's simple logic.

the bit of mine you quoted was in relation to the current topic, not ZA

a) community perception was that NO ONE BUT a prot paladin could tank heroics or ZA
b) anyone could do it with a good group of guildies reguardless of class (ZA) or even smart pugs (heroics)
c) IT IS NOT community perception (this is the part of mine you quoted) that only DKs can tank sarth, it is a fact because of the abilities of their class 10 hit cooldowns on 10 straight breaths

but then their armor has to drop below that of Paladins and Warriors so they end up at the same EH[/U]. Would you prefer that option or having Druid health dropped and armor values kept the same? Both are flavor and both will play differently. It would make Blocking for Warriors/Paladins more efficient for example.
But yeah, Druids can't have both highest armor and highest health in the game. This is not going to work.

um.......... i will address that bolded part in a second

I completely disagree with stearns on this one

As a druid, for savage defense i want to keep my armor and have them lower our HP instead, i think it is absurd we have a 1.749 stam modifier with kings, but armor, they already nerfed it once with weapons necks and trinkets, but to nerf it again with savage defense NO, nerf my health this time not my armor.

now back to the bolded part, we do not need lower armor values to keep out health, we still at least equivilent armor or we would become completely obsolete.

EH aside if you did that to druids we would take so much more damage over the long run that we would lose our functionality. We are already taking the most damage over the long run and you want to lower that even more?

[Liar]

I completely disagree with stearns on this one

As a druid, for savage defense i want to keep my armor and have them lower our HP instead, i think it is absurd we have a 1.749 stam modifier with kings, but armor, they already nerfed it once with weapons necks and trinkets, but to nerf it again with savage defense NO, nerf my health this time not my armor.

now back to the bolded part, we do not need lower armor values to keep out health, we still at least equivilent armor or we would become completely obsolete.

EH aside if you did that to druids we would take so much more damage over the long run that we would lose our functionality. We are already taking the most damage over the long run and you want to lower that even more?

First of all, you can't really just say "EH aside (...) we would lose our functionality" because if you have the best EH, then you are the best progression tank. This obviously implies that you have the job as progression tank which is quite important, if not the most important aspect a tank can have. Would you prefer having the lowest EH of all tanks but take the least mana to heal? That would mean your job would be to tank bosses your guild has on farm so you can replace another healer with a DPS. Maybe you like that role (and I am saying this with no malintent; different people like different things after all) but I don't. Being there while learning a boss, doing an important job, that is fun for me.
On a different note, you cannot say that you take the most damage already compared to other tanks. Maybe DKs while they have their CDs up, okay. But Warriors and Paladins? That depends on the boss. Hateful strikes? Druids take less damage. Loatheb? Paladins and Warriors take less damage but then again, which guild struggles more with Loatheb than with Patch?

Also, when I replied to Stearns I was deliberately provocative to make a point. You can either have high health or high armor, not both. That was my point and I'd rather see Druid health brought down instead of their armor as well.

[Alent]

Agree with this. Percentage-based attacks are essentially a serious nerf to druid tanking viability that would have to be offset somehow. Otherwise we will have (completely justified) months of QQ from druids about how it's not fair that all tanking classes can tank any boss but we suck as add tanks. Currently we do suck as add tanks for progression content, but we have an advantage on bosses. You can't take away the thing that makes us viable without giving us something else to make us viable.

I strongly disagree with this - a % based move would still put you ahead because unless it was followed by a % based move, there's a solid chance you'd have enough HP to survive the next melee swings because you had more HP going in.

Consider an 80% DD nuke:

34,000 hp - 80% = 6800 hp left

42,000 hp - 80% = 8400 hp left.

Your HP pool is an advantage in % based attacks. Especially if they have a cast time, you can utilize Survival Instincts as a survival button to take less damage (even though the number is bigger.).

[Roana]

2. Making average damage intake matter

It's not (just) about making average damage intake matter. It's more about requiring tanks to use more than 1-2 stats, specifically avoidance-oriented ones.

There are actually a number of techniques for this, and Blizzard has used a few of those in the past.

• Stacking avoidable debuffs. The classic example was Temporus in Black Morass, where Mortal Wound (-10% healing, stacked up to 10 times) made healing harder and harder, until eventually it became impossible. I saw more than one feral druid tank flatline on that early in the expansion, because they were so proud on how much health they could get that they were unhealable pretty quickly. Another example was Shirrak the Dead Watcher in heroic Auchenai Crypts. He applied a stackable (and avoidable) bleed debuff, which was the majority of his damage. Combined with the excessive slows on heals, the primary reason for tank death (aside from not staying out of the fire) was the bleed stacking too deeply and overwhelming HPS. Illidan's original Shear (not the version that got finally placed in the game) reduced health by a much smaller percentage, but stacked.
• Most of the damage is done to non-tanks. In this scenario, tanks still require steady healing, but they are not at serious risk and tank death is not likely to be the primary cause for a wipe. Tanks are just another healing target, the vast majority of the healing goes to the rest of the raid. In this case, you stack avoidance to reduce the burden on your healers, because it's generally an endurance fight. Moroes was an early example of this (most of the raid damage was due to Garrote and what the adds did), Gurtogg Bloodboil a later one (unfortunately, the aggro mechanics on Gurtogg made using avoidance-heavy gear unadvisable, as I understand it).
• Fast-attacking mobs. In this case, burst damage is not due to a heavy-hitter, but due to a series of successive attacks. Prince Malchezaar was the poster child for this kind of burst damage via his Thrash ability, but Jan'alai in Enrage mode (up to eight attacks in a Shield Block cycle, could crush for 6k mainhand/3k off hand) also qualified. In such a fight, the Central Limit Theorem and its variations tell us that avoidance becomes a very attractive mitigation stat to reduce burst damage, as bursts become closer to a normal distribution whose mean and standard deviation depend on your avoidance.
• Aggro mechanics that rely on avoidance. For example, consider attacks that reduce your threat only if they actually hit. Not all aggro-reducers do that, but if you balance it right, you have the choice between either going for avoidance gear or bringing more tanks.
• Debuffs that negate effective health. Imagine a debuff that cuts you off at 30k health max for 10 seconds every 30 seconds (tank version of Enfeeble).
• Debuffing healing. Effective Health gearing is predicated on being able to spamheal the tank. Now consider what happens if that cannot be done. Examples are putting heals on cooldowns or give them longer cast times; make any direct heal on the tank reduce healing taken from direct heals by x% (stackable) for a given period; have the boss put a debuff on the tank so that any heals on the tank heal the boss also; and so forth.
• Scalable damage output. Make the damage taken from critical attacks scale with the max health of the tank. See my previous posts on that matter.
• Don't have tanks just tank a single boss. While one-on-one fights are a staple of the raiding game, there is really no reason why this should always be the default. In such a situation (multi-mob tanking or frequent trading of aggro), EH does not necessarily become dominant anymore, and a challenge is created more by properly managing a more chaotic situation and your proficiency in that than by raw stats (how you split aggro between tanks so that no tank is overwhelmed, keeping debuffs up on several mobs, and so forth).

[Darksend]

First of all, you can't really just say "EH aside (...) we would lose our functionality" because if you have the best EH, then you are the best progression tank. This obviously implies that you have the job as progression tank which is quite important, if not the most important aspect a tank can have. Would you prefer having the lowest EH of all tanks but take the least mana to heal? That would mean your job would be to tank bosses your guild has on farm so you can replace another healer with a DPS. Maybe you like that role (and I am saying this with no malintent; different people like different things after all) but I don't. Being there while learning a boss, doing an important job, that is fun for me.
On a different note, you cannot say that you take the most damage already compared to other tanks. Maybe DKs while they have their CDs up, okay. But Warriors and Paladins? That depends on the boss. Hateful strikes? Druids take less damage. Loatheb? Paladins and Warriors take less damage but then again, which guild struggles more with Loatheb than with Patch?

Also, when I replied to Stearns I was deliberately provocative to make a point. You can either have high health or high armor, not both. That was my point and I'd rather see Druid health brought down instead of their armor as well.

Yea i worded my post badly, sorry let me clarify, my objection was to the word SAME.

What i am saying is that druids need slightly more EH (10%ish) to compensate for block, you cannot totally discount block even if you block 1000 damage of a 30000 hit 10% of the time, it is still there.

But while still doing that they need to have the same MEH, which since warriors take 16% less damage from magic and druids take only 12% less, can still leave druids with more HP and the same MEH

[Oiysters]

Having done successful ZG runs with both Prot Warrior (MT)/Fury Warrior (OT/DPS) and Prot Warrior (MT or OT/DPS depending the fight [Prot DPS was actually competitive back then])/Prot Paladin (MT) I have to agree that both works. However, having a Paladin made it easier (it didn't have to be a Prot Paladin, a Holy Paladin consecrating on trash worked just as well) by far. This has nothing to do with community perception, it's simple logic.
Having to wait a few secs on AoE on mobs and/or risking ripping aggro is worse than not having to wait and not ripping aggro. I absolutely loved the challenge that Heroic Shattered Halls was back then and I encouraged AoE as Warrior tank but I am not fooling myself: while I was good at AoE, my Paladin alt in blues was better.

This is the root of the argument in a nutshell. Any encounter in the game is doable with any tank. It's easier with certain tanks in certain roles. If the mechanics of ZA/Shatt Halls were ok/fair/not a problem, there's no practical purpose behind this discussion. Or you loved that challenge but you don't love the challenge of Sarth 3D?

You want to keep your health advantage on Druids? Sure, that's possible, but then their armor has to drop below that of Paladins and Warriors so they end up at the same EH. Would you prefer that option or having Druid health dropped and armor values kept the same? Both are flavor and both will play differently. It would make Blocking for Warriors/Paladins more efficient for example.
But yeah, Druids can't have both highest armor and highest health in the game. This is not going to work.

Lost so far in this discussion is the fact that Druid EH is getting a serious reduction in 3.1 with the incoming nerfbat to Survival of the Fittest, where we get to trade predictable mitigation for a weak damage shield that relies on my attacks critting to proc. No passive damage reduction like warriors and pallies. GC told the theorycrafters that the starting point for the nerf was 50%. Bye bye EH advantage.

You want equivalent health pools across tanking classes? Give me your avoidance and your CD's and you have a deal.

1. Shield block mitigating magical damage is a great idea.

2. Nerf the druid hp multiplier in bear form, but:

a. roll back the agi -> dodge nerf that we got with 3.0.

b. Make Barkskin = Shield Wall.

c. Give druids and pallies Spell Reflect.

It's our relative lack of avoidance and the lack of at least 2 situationally critical CD's that justify our EH advantage. If you advocate equalizing EH across tanking classes, you must also advocate equalizing all other tank-critical stats and abilities, otherwise druids become unviable.