Tanking Topics #3: Health

[Darksend]

I think it is all part of balance. For example, if a class that could tank, dps, or heal could be the very best at each category wouldn't we all just play that one class?

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f64/4...tml#post181403

[Worldie]

Our GM still would rather gkick me than let me heal anything.

For a very good reason. The fact I (or a druid) can heal, doesn't mean i know how to do it. I manage to let my tank die in heroics, despite i'm full Naxx 25 geared, because i don't know how to play the class, i know i should press those buttons, but how?
Exactly in same way, i tried going DPS on my DK for the lulz, i was doing less DPS than the tanks, even if my gear is fairly good. Why? Because i don't know how to, i never did that in a raid. I lack the weeks (months/years) of experience that others have, and my knowledge of the theory is very basic, differently from my deep knowledge of tanking.

I'd wonder also most of those warriors (because it's always warriors) who complain about that... how you react if i remind you that you can DPS, hence you should have only half effectiveness of a "full tank class"? Don't only watch the others, remind you are hybrids as well.

But that's not the point of this thread.

[TomHuxley]

I'd wonder also most of those warriors (because it's always warriors) who complain about that.

Of course it's always warriors...no other class was the single endgame tanking class in vanilla wow only to see their role progressively reduced with each expansion. Would you expect mages to complain about how small their tanking roll got?

That said, most of us have accepted the changes, have friends who are excellent tanks playing different classes, etc. And you are right, that isn't what the thread is about, as there are some serious issues with class balance in tanking atm, and MEH is a pretty large part of it (with DPS being the other part, IMO).

Edit: To be fair, the warrior(s) side-tracking the discussion to class roles should leave that for other threads. It's just not the way Blizzard has taken the game, and they have only made very small concessions on that (all of them relating to pure DPS classes), so let's keep the discussion to the topic at hand.

[Consecrate]

All the gun slot does is move the point where the stamina scaling surpasses a warrior out a bit further. The flat stamina boost from a single slot will never prevent that.

And the 4 defense skill, 21 hit?

[Satrina]

Has exactly nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

[Consecrate]

Oh but it does, that's defense that I have to gem for or I get crit...

So the defense does lead to EH.

[Satrina]

Are you really trying to argue that the missing defense from a gun slot is lowering your EH because you'd not have enough defense natively on your gear and would have to gem for it?

[warpdrive]

Well, for progression you have 1 set of gear initially, when you findout what's happening. Once you begin to get a feel for it you start chainging pieces around. At one point in Sunwell I had 1 set for each boss each a bit different to maximise something.

I don't say druids and deathknights don't do this aswell, but paladins and warriors just do have more options due to block and switching weapons around.

Either way this is about how to make tanks more equal at tanking magic damage, because at the moment druids and deathknights do have a huge advantage.

you see, that's just it.
as you said, for progression you only have one set of gear. it's not untill you have the place on farm and get all or most of the gear that a warrior could start using different items if it helps. change a trinket, change your gloves, maybe change your shield. but untill that happens, your stuck using the best items you have.

who cares if you can tank sarth in total "best in slot" end game gear as a warrior. it's no longer a progression boss for you.
a DK or Druid doesn't need that gear to do it, he can be far less geared then you and still be better at it.

as I've said, it's a gearing issue. druids and DKs don't need to be "geared" to do the fight. warriors do, and still needs help.
in other words, I'm starting to think that warrior gear is broken at the moment and needs far more health.

also, WotLK is now far different then what the game used to be.
no longer do we have multi sets like we used to (at least at this point).
no longer do we have a fire set, a nature set, a frost set, a tanking set, a trash set (BV set).
no longer do we truly need to change trinkets like in the past.
we more or less have a tanking set (tier 7/7.5), a block set for trash, and a few non-gemable items.
(and with all the AOE trash, I'm not too sure how a hi block value set helps with thunderclap, cleave, and shockwave)
as for trinkets: you use the best you have for threat and EH or avoidance. no need to change a trinket as 90% of the bosses are basicly the same as far as swing timmers go.

my point is at this time, when you are progressing, you don't have the luxury to change gear even if it is worth it...and there is no point at this time even if you have all the gear in the game.
you use the best you have at the time, and right now it's not enough.
as I've said, block rating (and to a smaller degree BV) is hurting warriors by robbing then of other much needed stats that druids get for free. never mind the fact that for the most part, when you are still gearing up, a plate user is forced to gem and enchant for defense.
(it's only when a plate user is more or less in full "best in slot" items that they don't waste too many gem slots/enchants with defense gems/enchants.)

think about it for a moment. back in TBC when you went from heroic gear to 10man gear, 80% of the items gave you MORE defense, not less. the same could be said about going into the 25man content.
(I had so much extra defense in just some T4 and badge gear, I would tank 75% of heroics in my pantys (no chest, no pants)...to help have extra rage. all while still having more then enough defense to not get crit.)

in todays game, going from blues to heroics, heroics to 10man (or 25man), 80% of the items give you LESS defense. it's why there are two defense trinkets in the game!
again, it's a gear issue.

when you then force 3 types of tanks to gem, enchant, and trinket for defense, the one who doesnt need to do it is at a huge advantage.
when you then give that same tank, hit and expertise (at, or almost caped) for free on the gear, that tank now has choices the other 3 could never even dream of.

I know at first it seems like I'm way off topic here.
but bare in mind, this gearing issue that warriors (and to some degree pallys) have is what is also hurting us on a "magical damage" fight.
it's not just the lack of ability from the class to handle the fight. it's a gearing issue.

a gearing issue that is starting to make me feel that plate gear is broken.

Warpdrive

[Rundjuling]

A ~20% Will of the Necropolis talent is one thing that could make warriors more attractive progression tanks.

[warpdrive]

consecrate,

at this time I have 545 defense. by removing my gun I'll have 543.
I'm not saying that 20 def rating is unimportant. but trust me, even with it, you'll be gemming and enchanting all over the place with defense.
also remember, if you were able to equip our gun, you would still loose what ever you are currently useing...that is a traid off that you will always have to make.

Oh, and in no way am I (or others that I can tell) saying that pallys should stay the same or be nerfed in some way.
we are for the most part in agreement that pallys are in the same boat as warriors at this time...and I fear it's all because our gear is broken.
(as well as our block mechanics)

I was in a high end raiding guild back pre-TBC, with plenty of server firsts.
I never liked the fact that warriors were the only tanks back then, and I'm glad as hell that things have changed.
I'm sure that most here agree with me.

trust me, we warriors on here don't want to be "THE" tanks.
what we want is everyone to be able to handle any fight that the game throws at all of us...including pallys.

Warpdrive

[minrog]

I have been designing Rawr profiles of stamina gear sets which show avoidance and threat levels of equivalently geared (read: best in slot hp gear and enchants). Right now the Druid is ahead by 12.5k hit points and 8% avoidance with roughly similar threat output. That is the closest I can get on the stats, if I start trying to boost the avoidance or threat output on the Warrior the hit point difference gets worse faster than the avoidance closes. Those numbers from the OP are shifted way down (for example Druids can already 59.5k health) and that slightly favors the Druid in the table because the way their health scales upward faster than the other classes. With true stam stacking I would not be surprised to see 80k health as a T9 health pool on a Druid with Warrior sitting around 57k or so.

Spell reflect can be used on phase 2 Malygos if you only pop it after the little shield deals come down. I don't think it works on any other raid encounters in Wotlk. I would be willing to trade it for 15% more max health if Blizzard wants to give it to anyone.

[Liar]

I think it is all part of balance. For example, if a class that could tank, dps, or heal could be the very best at each category wouldn't we all just play that one class?

Not really. You would play the class that gets the job done and is the most fun. Which for me is Warriors. Seriously, stop fixating on this issue. GC said they want all tanks to be equal in a sense that all tanks can tank everything - progression or farm fights.

Our GM still would rather gkick me than let me heal anything.

For a very good reason. The fact I (or a druid) can heal, doesn't mean i know how to do it. I manage to let my tank die in heroics, despite i'm full Naxx 25 geared, because i don't know how to play the class, i know i should press those buttons, but how?

That is not a class issue though. It's a skill issue. You don't have experience playing as healer and that's that (I had the same on my Druid, healing just didn't interest me). Paladins are very capable of healing well, so are Druids. Just like DKs are good DPS on so on. Just because you have no interest in this or lack the enthusiasm to learn it doesn't mean the class design is bad.
Anyways, my opinion is pretty clear on the issue by now I hope. I want all 4 classes being equally good tanks but that doesn't mean that your class cannot heal/DPS well just because you can't do/don't want to do it.

[Roarc]

Sorry to bring up Sartharion again, given a "gimmick" fight it just saddens me to see what happened last night in that it's a very EH needed fight.

Short story: we engage the boss 25 man, we have 2 warriors and 2 paladins on the tank-scene, 3 of which are our best tanks skill and gear-wise but I know this is a retard of an encounter from the MT's perspective if he's a Paladin or a Warrior. We only have about 1 1/2 of wipes until we reach a near perfect kill - with a Warrior Main Tanking. Yes it's possible for a Warrior to the jobb! All is good, no?

Here comes the issues:

1. A few times I died with 200-700 overkills of breaths even when I'm NOT in the so called one-shot range. I have around 42K HP engaging the boss fully buffed (reduced to about 31.5K in combat).

2. I have one personal ability that can save me during the one-shot range - shield wall. After this between 3 to 5 people in the raid are required to keep me alive.

Why are the above problems?

1a) Even with maxed out T7.5 gear I'm at the EH thresh-hold for this fight

b) This makes me rethink item choices. I even use TBC gear for crying out load. Enchants also come into play - EH / MEH centric even moving to the PVP shoulder enchant wasting one of the stats on the item are better here. Profession choices also echo since at the moment JW offers the best EH / MEH stats for a tank (why didn't blizzard include a 90 stam trinket but EVERY other stat?).

c) I know for a certainty other classes would face less of an issue here even disregarding usage of cool downs. Even with the coming druid nerfs, a DK or a Druid would be far supperior a Warrior or Paladin in this area due to higher EH and much higher MEH.

d) Intentional or not, EH / MEH is king here - again, disregarding cool downs.

2a) Even if I enjoy fights that stresses the entire raid, and requires everyone to do their part and so fort, it get far more stressed with a warrior or paladin on the main-tank position. This is unbalanced as hell cause the tank him self can do nothing to improve this and thus this has nothing do to with skill and almost gear choices.

b) The above is a problem since it stresses the capabilities of the raid, not the player of the MT role. This is quite if not very different from Shattered Halls or Zul'Aman Timed as a Warrior vs Paladin where a good Warrior COULD cope with it with the notion to the raid "mind your AoE threat a bit guys".

Why is this interesting?
We shouldn't, if at all possible, have this issue in future content what so ever. I think it's OK to have class A better at doing something. Paladins are to some extent better at dealing with the adds on Sartharion where a Warrior potentially is better (or at least equally good) to deal with the minibosses. Druids might be worse off on the adds but have pluses again dealing with the minibosses, it just becomes ridiculous if it's TO much of an advantage where it clearly shows game design focuses on EH / CD usage as seen on MT Sartharion.

With the above in mind I'd be fine if an event is fucked up hard for everyone. I do not mind that, as long as it's similarly hard for everyone. The problem comes when events are EH / MEH centric and you have two classes very limited in this area. I do NOT want "well just place a druid or DK there". That's wrong and poor game design. It should be skill-based what ever class I choose to play.

As a serious question - what would you suggest as a change for druids specifically to get it right?

Well Blizzard is nerfing Druids to have less armor (more in line with DK's) yet remain king of HP. This might push them into remotley similar levels as the remaining tanks on the EH side, but they will still be insane on the MEH side. Also, given they get a block-like mechanic, they could potentially be equally good as warriors on the fast-hitting encounters discussed earlier.

How do you fix this? I for one think the "10% rule" is a good one. Having a class potentially 20 or even 30% a head of the rest of the pack in terms of raw HP, and in terms of MEH similar levels, will make balancing encounters extreamly hard unless this class shouldn't become king of the "one shot" bosses. DK's will have similar advatages on fights with high burst that is controlled (i.e boss casts big boom boom, DK uses CD and lives). I would think shifting down Druid HP would be somewhat of a better solution than just nerfing armor since the later affects both EH and MEH, where the later is only EH. Both have proven to be king of many encounters now and in the past.

• Imp thunderclap also made it such that it wasn't just melee speed that was slowed but also casting speed.

This is actually something I've though of as well and to some extent it wouldn't be that unbalanced. A warrior is alongside the paladin the worst class to cope with burst damage hence it's in their interest to slow these down. This would shift the warrior to have a little more time to get help from someone else to keep him alive with buffs or interrupts of casts.

• Vigilance was self-castable to help the toon itself take 3% less dmg.

This is also something I reckon should be an obvious where Vigiliance does offer more than the mear 3% damage reduction. But just looking at that aspect of the talent it should be possible to do this (I won't go into the BoSanc loss for Warriors since it's another topic all together).

• Spell Reflect actually reflected spells. This is probably my single biggest ability gripe in the game. I'm tired of having to test out and mentally catalog which boss abilities work with it and which don't.

Again, I fully agree here. Take SP off the CD and have it be used as a magical spell reflection for bolts and a spell shield for direction AoE damage on a medium ranged CD. This doesn't solve the issues Paladins have though cause they are in a similar - almost worse - boat than Warriors in the above topic.

Regards
Thugs

[swelt]

I'm glad to see that at least a few posters have pointed out the relationship between this topic and healer mana regen (which is also currently on Blizzards agenda). The fact that high effective health, low avoidance tanks are viable must in part be due to healers having infinite mana. Tank health is one part of the raiding equation, it's not the only piece.

I wish they would just add an epic fire resist craftable set, so we can stop talking about Sartharion.

[Dawnbreak]

A few comments on the real problems:
1) Pvp gear for tanking, I hate pvp and I most defenetly don't want to be forced to do pvp just to be a competitive tank, no other class has to pvp to be effective in pve.
2) EH for druids is getting rebalanced with Savage Defense, until we get the actuall numbers let's not be hasty with asumptions.
3) Jewelcrafting plays a big role in the whole picture since druids scale best with stamina, and jewelcrafting provides most stamina, I would want to see JC rebalanced rather than druids. It's pretty much the same with leatherworking being the best all around proffesion in sunwell.
4) Block is pretty much redundant and could use a rebalance to at least make it somewhat usefull against bosses. Parry could use a rebalance aswell seing that the only stat that makes no difference for druids is the least valued to other tanks aswell.
5) Defense is not really scaling too well above the crit cap so I guess ulduar plate gear will scale stamina more than ulduar leather gear that is in part shared with rogues.

With all those into account I think the real HP difference now is somewhere between 3-5k and it's very likely to remain constant.

[Widdox]

So I've read all this and wow there are some serious upset people here. I am going to agree with most. Physical dmg EH is within limits. The problem is not normal boss fight mechanics. Its with the "large insta gib" abilities that Blizzard has brought out with Maly and Sarth. (Those are the only 2 new bosses we have to judge.)

Really if you take out the "large insta gib magic dmg" abilties of bosses, I am fairly happy with how tanks are scaled. But, when you throw out 35k magic damage attacks to the tank, the warrior and the paladin fall short.

I'm not going to recommend how they fix it. Because there are many ways to do so. Suffice it to say, that I like my shield and I would it to play a role in these type encounters. I am sure the warriors would say the same.

[Liar]

I wish they would just add an epic fire resist craftable set, so we can stop talking about Sartharion.

Don't forget resist sets for every possible school of magic too, then a set that only consists of Armor and Stamina and then make all classes get expertise and hit capped via talents so they can hold aggro in those sets.

...or, you know, we could actually fix the underlying problem once and for all instead of wishing for silly bandaids?

[arbosch]

The problem are not the hps difference. The problem are the encounters. Here is the real problem. If class A has 35'000 hps and class B has 40'000 hps.

Now here come the encounter and he has a big hit for 22'000. Now both class dies when they get hit twice and got not healing. So there is no difference between the classes. Now comes the magic moment.

If class A has 38'000 hps and class B has 45'000 hps. You have the magic moment where class B can survive 2 hits without healing. This is the magic moment which create problems. Tank B will die less faster then tank A and the healers will see that tank B is easier to heal because he can survive two hits where tank A need spammhealing (patchwork fights).

Another problem is the 'really big' hit. If the mob hit for 50'000. Noone will be able to tank it and everything is okay . But if he hit for 42'000. You have nother magic moment where tank B can survive the hit and tank b can not survie the hit and so tank B is a way better choice as tank then class A (Sartharion 3D fights).

You see the only question is, how many of this magic moments existe in ulduar? If ulduar will be hard, then you will see this magic moments and then the low hps tanks have problems. It is possible that blizzard remove all this magic moments and the tankclasses are balanced with the different hps pools. But i don't think they will balance every encounter for 4 different classes with 4 different hps pools and so get arround every 'magic moment'. This is way to much work only to balance encounters. It is way easier to balance out the hps pools for all tankclasses and then balance out the avoid from the tankclasses and so make them 'equal'.

Btw. if there existe tentacel bob which makes every attack round 50 attacks for 1,5k hps. Then you will see the warrior and paladin laughting abount this mob and block his attack away. Dk and druids will think this mob is not tankable because they can not remove the low hits with a 'block'. So this art of encounter is unfair against druids and dks, but this encoutner not exists yet .

Arbosch Bloodforge

[swelt]

I don't think I'm wishing for a silly bandaid, rather I'm pointing out a flaw in their craftable itemisation. IMO, there should be sets for the major schools, not just frost. Time after time they've implemented resist gear after the fact. They should have learned by now to have a baseline resist set from the outset.

[Stearns]

I think it'll help the discussion if people stop approaching it from a point of view that says "I want to be overpowered in some respect and currently I'm not" to the view that Blizzard takes: we want all tanks to be able to tank all content, and yet we want the tanks to feel and play differently. We want variety in tanks, otherwise what's the point? And we want variety in boss encounters.

This is not hard to understand. Personally, I dont have any solutions. I think I'm not experienced enough with the game to offer constructive class design suggestions to Blizzard. I'm still dazzled by how good a job they've done in wrath with tank class rebalancing, tbh.

With Blizzard's criteria in mind, some encounters really will favor some classes over another and that will always be the case - there is no way around it. Maybe the next tank class of choice for the last boss of Ulduar in hard mode will be paladins. Or warriors. Does that mean your guild is going to stack pallies & warriors just for 1 boss? Of course not. It would be as ridiculous as stacking druids or DKs fro Sarth3D. Oh, and btw, druids still need external CDs from other classes in most strategies that have druids MTing.

My point is that this talk of Sarth3D is way overblown. And even though some of the more level headed warriors and pallies out there try to make this all about EH, I suspect a huge part of the motive is that these classes are simply weaker by design on the current hardest boss in the game, and havent gotten over that.

I'm sure if there was a mechanic on Sarth3D that required spell reflect, or some sort of Illidan shear mechanic, the entire discussion of EH would not be happening at this point in the game. If Warriors & pallies were the best tank for the hardest boss in the game, they wouldnt have anything to complain about. A lot of this discussion is much more about wounded-warrior-ego than those wounded warriors care to admit.