Tanking Topics #3: Health

[Kazeyonoma]

Paladins could be either given a new ability like they got their single taunt, or they could tie a more consistent but slightly lower spell reduction to holy shield.

[lubz]

Q: But if you make all health values similar wont every tank be the same?!

A: No. Just as DPS classes do damage in different ways, so can tank classes. There can be some variance in how each tank handles and survives every situation, but they don't have to be identical. A few % within another tank in every situation is reasonable.

Your topic is one small (not quite so small actually) step towards making all tanks more similar, which is the path the development team has also been heading down with their "bring the player, not the class"-thinking.

I'm just worried it goes too far. The most salient distinction between the tanks at the moment is their health pool. If you remove that distinction, how many non-expert players will know the difference between a druid and a warrior tank, and their strengths/weaknesses? And how many practical differences will there really be?

[Drao]

Paladins could be either given a new ability like they got their single taunt, or they could tie a more consistent but slightly lower spell reduction to holy shield.

I've been crying about Spell Reflection for a long time too

Hope topic#4 have something about DPS outputs and the so called higher threat abilities

[Hamburglar]

The biggest problem in terms of design is the feral druid. I mean, they MT some of the hardest bosses wearing FROST RESIST gear. I know druids who have MT'd Sarth 3D, Malygos, etc in the frost resist gear and I think it is absolutely ridiculous. I mean conceivably if some green quality Eskimo Parka of Stamina existed in the game that had 200 stam on it, it would be the best in slot tanking chest for druids. Well-designed? I think not.

And block should be a useful stat for tanking bosses. How this would be brought about is beyond my grasp, but perhaps block should extend towards magic damage. Hell, why bring a shield if you can't stop a dragon's flame breath with it?

[Kojiyama]

I'm just worried it goes too far. The most salient distinction between the tanks at the moment is their health pool. If you remove that distinction, how many non-expert players will know the difference between a druid and a warrior tank, and their strengths/weaknesses? And how many practical differences will there really be?

I would say that it's the first step towards making the differences between the classes actually matter.

When one factor (health) outweighs everything else, it stops mattering how the class is designed or what strengths/weaknesses other than the primary concern are a factor.

If a tank dies, it's game over. Doesn't much matter what toys they have on their hotbar or what mechanics they use if they die.

Likewise, the difference in DPS classes should be to the point where they all DPS roughly the same on most fights. Sure, some classes are somewhat better than others on some fights, but generally the goal should be that they all feel viable and useful, shouldn't it?

There are many ways of approaching this. One would be to adjust health (and, I do think at least a little of that will have to be done no matter what) while another is to increase the value of block and add other forms of damage mitigation to equalize the general survival time while leaving unique aspects.

The main point, for me, is that Block is not worth 4-11k HP or various other cooldowns and abilities.

[Liar]

Your topic is one small (not quite so small actually) step towards making all tanks more similar, which is the path the development team has also been heading down with their "bring the player, not the class"-thinking.

I'm just worried it goes too far. The most salient distinction between the tanks at the moment is their health pool. If you remove that distinction, how many non-expert players will know the difference between a druid and a warrior tank, and their strengths/weaknesses? And how many practical differences will there really be?

I'll be blunt here: Who cares? Having nearly equal health pools doesn't mean all tanks play the same or are equal in all positions. You still got the flavor of blocking, high avoidance and high armor. Equalizing EH and MEH doesn't change this and it also doesn't mean that Warriors would be running around with Druid health levels (because their modifiers aren't equal: 12%/Barkskin vs 10-16%/SW). The absolute health number is not what matters, it's MEH and EH and you can tweak those, as said before, with other things than just health (though obviously the difference shouldn't be too big).

[Argamasilla]

EH is not what they are talking about. EH is about the average time you can live with avoidance. What they are talking about is the one time large hits, which makes block negligible, that will kill one class of tank because they do not have enough raw health to survive, while another class can survive.

[Tharr]

The problem is future content. If the health scales as you predict then Druids and Deathknights already have a massive advantage at the start.

Druids are given a block equivalent mechanic in 3.1, Blizzard says they will lower armor for it. A better solution would be to lower stamina scaling and let them keep most of their armor since they do lack parry and (I think) therefore have a bit lower avoidance. The fact druids can put on all stamina gear and still be crit immune with talents don't help either, but it's something druids can do.

Deathknigts already have more avoidance, and with plenty of cooldowns to handle most situations I don't get why they need more health to.

If your predictions hold true, and I see no reason they shouldn't, Blizzard really have to look over health values before they get out of control (read avoidance in sunwell).

Having all tanks reasonably close on health doesn't make them similar, just as different dps classes does similar dps the tanks should have similar survivability and threat. And a huge part of that survivability is always health, because when that reaches zero we all die.

[Rime]

Regarding when multiple tank classes apply to guilds with varying health pools, I think the topic is pretty solidly unimportant. If a druid applies to a guild with 45k health and a warrior applies with 44k health and they take the druid because "he has more health," I can assure you the warrior should consider himself lucky to have been saved from endless months of terrible raiding.

The only thing important there is your effective magical health (health x passive reduction x uptime on CDs).

The only thing important here is your effective magical health. If you lead a discussion that is hyperfocused on one topic, you can say practically anything you want. I could go start a thread about avoidance variances between tanking classes and insist that deathknights are clearly unbalanced. Besides, if we're talking about magic mitigation, health pool disparities aren't the bigger issue. It would be magic mitigation, which works out as follows (assuming meta and BoS):
Druid - 83.6% of magical damage taken
Paladin - 81.5% of magical damage taken
Warrior - 80.5% of magical damage taken
Unholy Deathknight - 76.7% of magical damage taken

Factor in cooldowns (for magic mitigation, smaller with shorter cooldowns is typically a plus) and you can see why deathknights are often the most effective magic tanks. Health has much less to do with it - anyone can cheese their health pool with polar gear and greens if that's their goal. Like Satrina said, Sarth is a thing of the past and I rather doubt blizz will be so clumsy going forward. Deathknights are simply more effective magic tanks. Why is that a negative?

Paladins damage spread, druids damage soak, deathknights reduce incoming damage. Warriors do a little of everything (though I won't argue that warriors aren't in a mediocre place right now). Balancing health pools within a few percent of each other is completely illogical, as it would render druids generally ineffective (maybe they'll revert back to their vanilla wow state) and deathknights would come out as the unequivocal king. They have a truly limitless energy system, the highest physical and magical damage reduction, and will scale the most quickly with armor.

Why would we want health pools to remain close to each other? The only argument I could see being merited (this thread seems focused on magic damage soaking) is that the tanks should have either high health or high magic reduction. Druids are in the correct place on the above list. All three of the other classes would need some tweaking (warriors and pallies would need a definite health advantage to compensate for lower reduction). But say they tweak warriors and pallies upwards on health and tweak deathknights down, and you've fundamentally changed the viability of the classes.

Deathknights with lower health pools are more susceptible to strings of hits that will kill them. No reasonable armor advantage a DK may have compensates for being unhittable (which is a straight ~1500 reduction in physical damage taken). In terms of net damage taken a deathknight currently comes out on the top, but each isolated occurence of unavoided attacks is more deadly than for the other tanks. That's why they have a health pool advantage.

Blizz has done a fantastic job of designing each of the 4 tanks to function in different ways but with generally equal effectiveness. If you isolate one topic such as health, avoidance, or dps/tps you will always be able to find a bone to pick. But that doesn't mean that there's something wrong. Sartharion is not a reasonable discussion point. It's nonsense as far as tank balance goes, and I'd rather move on just like Blizz surely has.

[rocket808]

The biggest problem in terms of design is the feral druid. I mean, they MT some of the hardest bosses wearing FROST RESIST gear. I know druids who have MT'd Sarth 3D, Malygos, etc in the frost resist gear and I think it is absolutely ridiculous. I mean conceivably if some green quality Eskimo Parka of Stamina existed in the game that had 200 stam on it, it would be the best in slot tanking chest for druids. Well-designed? I think not.

And block should be a useful stat for tanking bosses. How this would be brought about is beyond my grasp, but perhaps block should extend towards magic damage. Hell, why bring a shield if you can't stop a dragon's flame breath with it?

no kididng here. Frost Resist gear to wear against a fire breathing dragon is best... and the fundamental idea that a shield blocks 0 damage? (again thinking about the movie "Dragonslayer" circa 1981).

anyways, as a long time paladin tank now (relative to end game content), I think that pure big stam numbers should not supercede a persons reputation and skill for most fights. granted, some of the examples above have nothing to do with anything that any amount of skill can accomodate. this leads to the problem that tanking sufficiency leans towards how much HP one has (and is shown to be the case today with FrR gear being the best magic tanking gear in many cases due to its crazy stam values). normalizing the HP will help in the emotional response someone has when any tank should be able to do it, but i still personally like some of the specialization that certain tank classes bring to the table.

I think it is a travesty that warriors now have the lowest stam from the point that 4 year WoW veteran warrior tanks could be perceived to be "insufficient" as tanks in certain situations. As a paladin, I have lived a large portion of my tanking career as the "add tank", "trash tank (aka hyjal tank)", and it has been very very nice to be able to MT almost everything today. For this, +rep to the class designers mods to the tanks.

The tank skills that were learned in Sunwell are now getting faint (cooldown use, super taunt control, tank switching, and uber threat gen). Naxx pretty much threw a lot of skill down the toilet where I can run in and engage a full room of mobs by myself and survive with 1 healer, and some new green tank can pretty much do the same.

I think the HP should be evened out instead of the 25% difference as it is today. I more hope that the game designers focus on skill moves as opposed to HP stacking to survive future encounters.

[Talldar]

Out of the tanking topics this one stands on quite weak feet. Honestly, this is a very tunnel-viewish attempt on equalizing all tanking classes. Because if we start going down the road of giving everyone the same HP, we will inevitably end up giving everyone the same mitigation and avoidance - everything else would be out of balance, right?

I really don't see the problem where you try to nail it to - class design - but much rather in two places else: a) Damage source classification and b) encounter design.

a) As has been mentioned in this thread already, it's quite unlogical for a dragon's breath to be considered "magical damage" at all. Logically, if a warrior raises his shield, it should protect him from either a fire-, poison- or frost breath. This is a significant issue in my book, and something the game mechanics should be adopted about in the long run.

For example, how about a shieldblock-like ability, that reduces AoE, or even just "coned", or elemental damage radically, but also requires us to hold the shield up with both hands, thus we couldn't attack in that time? Make it a "as long as you press the key"-ability without cooldown and wooohooo, you just added a completely new aspect to the game. Right now shields don't really step up to their role, there's a lot of room for creative uses still unexplored, and - more sadly - undiscussed. Disclaimer: This is a "coming to mind spontaneously"-idea, so don't get caught up in possible flaws - I just want to show that it's quite weird to have a "shield" and in fact only really using it as a "passive weapon" that grants armor. Yep, a shield protects me - but how can it be such a significant part of my armor, even when I do not block?

Hell, if you are about to approach weird tanking things, the shield road offers one hell of a lot options for improvement.

b) block isn't really helpful in boss fights, this is a fact. But it's not "block's" fault, it's the encounter's. Go get us a boss with an attack speed of 0.5 seconds that hits for about 2000 dmg, and block becomes quite the winner. However, the only thing we seem to get is higher and higher hits or magical spike-damage.

My conclusion: Do not equalize tanking classes up to a generic state, but bring the same variety to encounters that we see with tanks. Not only would this benefit everyone in terms of "you tank this, I tank that, now you MT, now I'm going to", but also would it make encounters more interesting for every tank. Because, seriously, right now all we have to think differently about in fights are a boss's special abilites - run now, kite there, damage stop, pick up adds. There is no difference in the basic way of tanking bosses, and it kind of confuses me that I tank a Dragon 20 times my size the same way I tank one of the horsemen.

[Horacio]

Note: I followed the link back to the 'base' warrior and I noticed she only had 131 Hit rating which is significantly short of cap. Although cap isn't absolutely critical and threat shouldn't be an issue....I like to see mine higher. Of course, rocking one of the 40 stam/40 hit food buffs will get it alot closer. The Paladin model's hit is even lower and correct me if I'm wrong, but +hit is especially critical for pallys, no? Spells and melee attacks.

With 1 or 2 exceptions, I am virtually in the same gear as the model and my hp tops out at 32.0k unbuffed. I could trade some hit for hp but not with PTR not yet up. Our MT is geared the same. Not many others we know are close to us across any class. I take this to mean what we are talking about is extreme min/maxing.

Where does avoidance figure in to the equation? I am of the general opinion that for progression, the "go on and hit me, you SOB" style of tanking is best and that's in lone with the model warrior/pally tank's gear.

I also noticed the model pally has 12% block. That doesn't sound so good but I don't play a tankadin.

As far as solutions to the health pool differential...that's tough. On the surface, you can think of loads of different points to shove some in. An extra % to 'Vitality'. Add some base health, give warriors a wicked, bad ass ranged weapon (Armor Plated Combat Bazooka) but its a tough balancing act for game designers. Buff it here, watch it go goofy down the line.

Its hard to say. So far, I stack up well statistically with our pally tank but its a small sample size.

[Xav]

A curiosity on the paladin/warrior comparison for health: You mention that you would like to see all tanks within a few % of each other. Before any of the proposed changes, paladins will have, by the projections in this thread, only 3% more health at tier 10 (like you said, not exact numbers, but a good approximation none the less). Not that I don't like the changes you propose (though adding a static health value to counteract base health is a really bad idea in my opinion). What is the thinking behind changing paladin health mechanics? Is it a dislike for the scaling differences in general? The end result numbers seem pretty close. Shoot, by your stated desired endstate, paladins and warriors are already within desired bounds at T10 level. Or is it that you want the health numbers exactly equal?

Mind you, I don't mind having the same scaling as long as we can accommodate the base health difference and the lack of equal ability to stam stack, but I am trying to figure out why you would need to change it if it already fits in your model of "within a few percent of each other" before your proposed changes. Not to mention the proposed model doesn't account for the lack of pure stat stacking in the ranged slot for paladins, so it really wouldn't equalize unless you did something to account for that (you could probably work it into whatever method you use to handle the base health difference though).

They were just numbers thrown out as an example as how to easily create equal scaling. It doesn't matter if paladins are nerfed or not. Paladins and warriors are in extremely similar boats as it is right now.

It seems often enough using the words "example" or "possible solutions" causes people to overlook it (not necessarily concerning just you, jere), and to instantly hit "reply" and scream "NERF"

[Machus]

The disparity in magical EH could perhaps be addressed with resistance gear. In the past resistance has been itemized in a very un-fun way, but if that was changed tanking issues with magic bosses could be easily resolved:

• Magic resistance is per school, and nobody likes farming five different types of gear. It should be unified into one magic resistance stat. That's well overdue.
• Magic resistance is not found naturally on armor, so a tank would have to take inferior armor trading defense for magic resistance etc. Again, un-fun itemization. Magic resistance should be a standard component of tank armor, just as they all have strength, stamina, and some green defensive stats.
• Magic resistance should apply to all magical attacks of raid bosses, unless there's some good, not unbalancing reason for exceptions (for example the attack is meant to one-shot any tank unless you do the intended thing).

I think an itemization change such as this would firstly make magical attacks fun to tank, rather than reducing the tank to some sort of gear scavenger or doorstop who can do nothing but stand there and take the damage. Then disparities between classes could be addressed by putting more magic resistance on plate, and a bit more again on shields.

[Freman]

No offence but you version of CharDev Warrior
is flawed. to get those specs i would have to be a Blacksmith to get extra sockets in certain gear, a Jewelcrafter to get the +41 to stamina, and an Leather working to get the +90 stamina enchats....

now after playing around with it a bit i found the gear/spec i would recremend. chardev.org - a World of Warcraft Character Planner - x
my profession are Minning and skinning when i thought of this.

[Ciderhelm]

I edited out your quote of the original post b/c of the length of it. The CharDev Warrior was an outline of what a cutting edge progression tank will be wearing to min/max their stats. It may not be something you're personally aiming for, but it is in line with what Blizzard can expect for guilds like Premonition.

[Xav]

Out of the tanking topics this one stands on quite weak feet. Honestly, this is a very tunnel-viewish attempt on equalizing all tanking classes. Because if we start going down the road of giving everyone the same HP, we will inevitably end up giving everyone the same mitigation and avoidance - everything else would be out of balance, right?

I really don't see the problem where you try to nail it to - class design - but much rather in two places else: a) Damage source classification and b) encounter design.

a) As has been mentioned in this thread already, it's quite unlogical for a dragon's breath to be considered "magical damage" at all. Logically, if a warrior raises his shield, it should protect him from either a fire-, poison- or frost breath. This is a significant issue in my book, and something the game mechanics should be adopted about in the long run.

For example, how about a shieldblock-like ability, that reduces AoE, or even just "coned", or elemental damage radically, but also requires us to hold the shield up with both hands, thus we couldn't attack in that time? Make it a "as long as you press the key"-ability without cooldown and wooohooo, you just added a completely new aspect to the game. Right now shields don't really step up to their role, there's a lot of room for creative uses still unexplored, and - more sadly - undiscussed. Disclaimer: This is a "coming to mind spontaneously"-idea, so don't get caught up in possible flaws - I just want to show that it's quite weird to have a "shield" and in fact only really using it as a "passive weapon" that grants armor. Yep, a shield protects me - but how can it be such a significant part of my armor, even when I do not block?

Hell, if you are about to approach weird tanking things, the shield road offers one hell of a lot options for improvement.

b) block isn't really helpful in boss fights, this is a fact. But it's not "block's" fault, it's the encounter's. Go get us a boss with an attack speed of 0.5 seconds that hits for about 2000 dmg, and block becomes quite the winner. However, the only thing we seem to get is higher and higher hits or magical spike-damage.

My conclusion: Do not equalize tanking classes up to a generic state, but bring the same variety to encounters that we see with tanks. Not only would this benefit everyone in terms of "you tank this, I tank that, now you MT, now I'm going to", but also would it make encounters more interesting for every tank. Because, seriously, right now all we have to think differently about in fights are a boss's special abilites - run now, kite there, damage stop, pick up adds. There is no difference in the basic way of tanking bosses, and it kind of confuses me that I tank a Dragon 20 times my size the same way I tank one of the horsemen.

I can't believe how poor of a response and how wandering your post is. First off, balance is exactly what they're aiming for. Each tank's stats don't need to be 100% identical, but maybe 90-95% similar would make balancing the easiest.

Then you suggest to do the activated abilities to reduce damage taken and thus in a way balance tank health. Great, this is what we were suggesting to. Except right now that's not how it is, which is why a few brief suggestions were brought up. Although, you did mention you just came up with your idea spontaneously - you realize it's exactly what we said, no? Or did you not read the post in its entirety after all?

Your argument for block is funny, because nothing has been designed that way. Infact, no boss in any progression content since TBC has been designed in such a way. Brutallus not only combined quick attacks but the individual swings were for loads of damage. Loatheb fits the "block" boss archetype - but he's from 3+ years ago and is absolutely trivial for anyone to tank. No "difficult" boss right now causes block to be a beneficial stat.

Also, variety in tanking encounters is fine. But causing some to be EASILY tanked by some tank classes - and extremely difficult to tank (or impossible) for others, is the problem. This is very thoroughly described over, and over in the post. With such high variances in tank performance (health, mitigation styles, avoidance) right now - who the hell do they design for?

[Xav]

No offence but you version of CharDev Warrior
is flawed. to get those specs i would have to be a Blacksmith to get extra sockets in certain gear, a Jewelcrafter to get the +41 to stamina, and an Leather working to get the +90 stamina enchats....

now after playing around with it a bit i found the gear/spec i would recremend. chardev.org - a World of Warcraft Character Planner - x
my profession are Minning and skinning when i thought of this.

I'm not sure I really understand your post, but, just check my current armory. It's what I'm going to be wearing for progression, + Boundless Ambition when it drops, which lets me swap some other stuff around slightly too for more hp. And no offense to yourself, too, but considering you're using parry gems in your suggested gearset, you have a lot of reading to do.

[Garrek]

I'm just worried it goes too far. The most salient distinction between the tanks at the moment is their health pool. If you remove that distinction, how many non-expert players will know the difference between a druid and a warrior tank, and their strengths/weaknesses? And how many practical differences will there really be?

What are the practical differences between a boomkin and a mage, afflic lock and a shadow priest, demo lock and hunter, rogue and fury warrior, dk's and retadins? In the end they all have one goal of doing DPS. They bring different buffs and utilities to the table, but most 'average joes' are going to consider their worth by a dps meter more often than not. Similarly the tanking classes *should* basically have equivalent sets of defenses (both magical and physical), with the difference being the mechanisms we utilize (play style) and utility and synergies we can bring to the table.

Easier said than done, but I do believe it can be done.

[Contego]

I got a question though:

Is it a good idea to sacrifice a socket bonus just to get maximum stamina? Doesn't matter if the bonus is defence, dodge, block or even parry. I think, that you get the most of your gear, by socketing the right color gem. Don't think, that there is or will ever be an encounter, where a hundred health points will make a difference.