Tanking Topics #3: Health

[Vorps]

I was just talking to a friend about how it would be nice if block and/or Spell Reflect had influence on spells and spells that can't be reflected. You would think shields and armor would be able to have some impact on the amount of magical damage that is able to permeate. If you raise a shield infront of Sartharion's breath, I'm pretty sure you'd take less damage than some guy standing there taking it head on, unprotected.

It's funny, back in TK when I played a Protection Paladin I was always wishing Holy Shield could mitigate the dumb golem magical burst, or that I had some equivalent to Spell Reflect. Now that I have Spell Reflect playing a warrior, I find myself wishing I could have AMS and IBF. 'Tis a cruel cruel cycle.

Actually that's one of the other options I've discussed amongst friends. What if all tanking cooldowns were made to have faster cooldowns (read: Last Stand being made same cooldown as AMS, and Shield Wall being made same cooldown as IBF), along with smoothing health values between the tanking classes.

[Satrina]

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?

What do you think Joe Sixpack PUG raidleader asks as the first question when looking for a tank?

What's your health and armour?

Don't think, that there is or will ever be an encounter, where a hundred health points will make a difference.

Damage and healing are not lockstepped quantities. You don't take 6k damage then get healed for 6k. You'd be surprised how often a few hundred health makes the difference between struggling on a new encounter and winning. That's the entire foundation of Effective Health, which we've been using since Ragnaros.

[nips]

I have to aggre a tad with bubonic. This site sometimes make me feel it does lobbying just for warriors regardless on the effect it has on othere classes. Discussing healt is good i'm not saying different, but taking a gimp dk build and conclude that thats what people are going to use is flawed when we dont know what ulduar will bring. As an example what if warriors was brought up to the health level a gimp blood dk build can get? It would leave all other "normal" dk spec with alot less health then warriors. Should the gimp blood build be nerfed down to warrior standars? maybe, tbh i dont think alot of dk's would realy care as its only usefull to very spesific fights.

Your argument for doing this might be the theory that you have to stack health to clear new content, but do we realy know this?Going from t4-t5-t6 i did never stack stam and with cutting edge guilds that have all the t7.5 pieces do you realy think its nessesery to just stack stam? Personaly i dont and tbh i think its making a scewed picture on what to expect. Sure if you was going into ulduar in mostly t6 stacking stam would be required, but most is not doing that.

Oh and sorry for the grumpy morning post

[Kazeyonoma]

nips, if you didn't stack stam to clear t4-t5-t6 then you weren't doing it progression style. did you spend long weeks going over the same stuff in t4 until you were sufficiently geared for t5 and so forth? Or did you literally go into t5 with maybe 1, 2 if you were lucky in drops t4 pieces before facing down kael'thas.

[nips]

I went into t5 with most drops from kara. And that was my point, progression guilds are going into t8 with most t7 drops ulike it was in tbc. Unless uduar is crazy hard i dont think you will be undergeared in t7.

There are ofc hardmodes/achivemets etc that can require stam stacking, but we dont know yet.

[Liar]

I have to aggre a tad with bubonic. This site sometimes make me feel it does lobbying just for warriors regardless on the effect it has on othere classes. Discussing healt is good i'm not saying different, but taking a gimp dk build and conclude that thats what people are going to use is flawed when we dont know what ulduar will bring. As an example what if warriors was brought up to the health level a gimp blood dk build can get? It would leave all other "normal" dk spec with alot less health then warriors. Should the gimp blood build be nerfed down to warrior standars? maybe, tbh i dont think alot of dk's would realy care as its only usefull to very spesific fights.

You would have to balance fights around the highest stamina build spec DK for obvious reasons: If they balanced it around a DK with less than the maximum health, it would be too easy for a DK that exploits this knowledge and specs Blood to cheese it.
Now replace "blood spec DK" there with "Druid" and "DK with less than the maximum health" with Warrior/Paladin and the same is true. They cannot feasibly make an encounter that challenges a Druid healthwise without pretty much instantly killing a Warrior.

Your argument for doing this might be the theory that you have to stack health to clear new content, but do we realy know this?

Have you never tanked Kalecgos in Sunwell or Twins? You cannot honestly say that stacking avoidance these encounters where you can get stunned/crushed was a good idea. For example, Sathrovarr could stun you then finish you off in 2 more melee swings which were completely unavoidable. Same for Twins, they could stun you on the tank swap and still get a MH/OH off at times which in the worst case crushed for upwards of 10k.

It appears to me that you have an issue about the EH theory and not about the OP at all. Maybe you should read up on that, especially now that avoidance is pretty much worthless compared to TBC (where you could basically get away with heavy avoidance stacking in BT).

[burlaphat]

I went into t5 with most drops from kara. And that was my point, progression guilds are going into t8 with most t7 drops ulike it was in tbc. Unless uduar is crazy hard i dont think you will be undergeared in t7.

There are ofc hardmodes/achivemets etc that can require stam stacking, but we dont know yet.

The thing about stam stacking is it's not used to address the "normal" tanking situation. In a perfectly average tanking situation, it's probably "better" to get dodge or threat or something. However, because this is an MMORPG, RNG happens. Bad stuff happens, like strings of avoidance misses, taking the maximum possible damage from a Sarth breath, etc. You need to have the raw health/mitigation to be able to survive even if the RNG completely takes a dump on you.

That's what stam stacking is for. It's not about surviving the average situation or making it easy on healers, it's about just having the ability to survive the boss fight. Once that's no longer a concern you can switch out some of your stam set pieces for some avoidance/threat pieces, sure. But stam stacking is necessary until the "worst case scenario" does not mean that you have a high likelihood of dying.

[nips]

On my dk i can reach 75% avoidance and i have solo tanked patch25 with 33k health fully buffed, avoidance is not crap... and my point is dk relie heavily on it. Sure if you get roflstomped avoidance wont help you. My point is that we dont know if that is even an issue in ulduar, but that does not mean we should not discuss the posebility i guess I'll admitt that much

My point is just that unless every encounter in ulduar makes avoidance useless there you cant say dk's are going blood for progression fights.

Just like to add i'm not a part of a progression guild and i'm prolly what alot of tanks here would call a scrub tank I just wanted to put the dk side out there aswell.

[cudmaster]

hey a topic i actually agree with.

1) I don't mind AT ALL not being able to tank sarth when he has 3 pals, its a boring job I'm more than happy to offload on others, and I think Bliz designed it particularly to make people accept and love the 40+ deathknights that showed up in their guilds on launch day.

2) The health bar has absolutely nothing to do what so ever with how I play my warrior vs my paladin, I suspect if I had a druid or dk it wouldn't be much of a factor either...

3) HP is a big factor in who gets to tank progression fights (historically/typically)! They need to even this stuff out, it pissed my shit off having to respec fury (which I suck at only slightly less than I do at healing) so I could pretend to be useful on Failmyst so I could get the 3 or 4 best in slot plate tank items from a boss a plate tank could not tank... I would pay good money for a chance to throttle any blizzard employee at all responsible for THAT decision, I wouldn't have minded sitting, but they FORCED me to be there, and next to useless (fortunately I had some "decent" fury pieces, but no where near what I would have had if I'd actually been interested in being a DPS warrior, and it was even worse when it was the other guy's turn to rotate in for loot.)

I am seriously concerned that when it comes to progression, the warrior will only be allowed to tank if the tank MUST spell reflect... honestly I'm ok with the pally being "adds and trash" but its my alt, I'd probably feel different if it were my main.

In my nightmares I imagine that they will "correct" the problem by putting a "you have 20% more HP" 4 piece bonus on T8, you know in classic blizzard "fix it only slightly too late" style... an example would be designing a boss that parries to much and kills the tank or at least severely nerfs their ability to cause threat, well thats ok because that boss drops a piece with +80 exp on it, problem solved. (actually that might be a good way to for them to force us to let a pally MT a fight... hmm...)

I digress, there are however some (non rote) ways that they could maintain the status quo on health, yet make sure it isn't all druids all the time, such as nerfing druid threat on a fight, forcing another tank to be used during one phase to build threat, and then over to a druid during the next phase to survive it, and back and forth.

They could also just simply tune things so any tank will die if say they don't move at the right time, or some raid member throws a switch at the right time while making the "normal" damage easily survivable by anyone.

I'm open to see what they do with it, but I agree, if the new stuff is like the old stuff, druids are going to have a HUGE advantage... and i really hope they don't solve the problem(s) they have by just making us use vehicles...

I for one did NOT enjoy Oculus, I want to play as MY CHARACTER, NOT A DRAGON, NOT A SIEGE ENGINE. Vehicles add a nice "change of pace" in games like HALO where everyone is THE SAME otherwise, but in a game where I can play any of 10 classes of any of 10 races, I have the option to play how I want, and change it up by playing a different race/class if I get bored, forcing static vehicle abilities on everyone, reduces the options (and replay value) in WoW, rather than creating new options; it won't matter if I bring my warrior, paladin or rogue, that stupid dragon mount will still play exactly the same.

[Kojiyama]

To those arguing that "a bit of HP won't make a difference", I would have to respectfully say that you are very, very wrong.

First off, we are not talking about small amounts of HP. 4k-12k differences are not trivial differences. They could easily be in the realm of surviving an extra swing (or two!) from a boss after a large attack.

Any experienced tank who has been doing so for years knows full well that a "little extra" HP has probably saved their ass on more than a few boss fights.

I remember a funny conincidence where I was debating with an off-tank in BWL many years ago, where he was arguing that 1-2 points of Stamina was nothing to get fussed about when we were talking about enchants and whatnot. That very raid, I got the Elementium Reinforced Bulwark - Item - World of Warcraft from Chromaggus which gave me 4 more Stamina than the Earthen Guard - Item - World of Warcraft I was using at the time.

During Nefarion, which I believe was our second kill and still very shaky in terms of difficulty, I ate a huge breath during the Warrior call with some other damage factors involved and spiked down to 11 HP. The shield saved my life and made the difference between a kill and a wipe.

This stuff happens all the time in progression raids.

[Krays]

I think i noticed an ommision here. No 1 fort, gives stamina, and each class gets a differet amount of stamina from forts, Paldains gets more than warriors as will druids. Also you ommited kings, which does the same thing as fort in that it gives varying amounts of hp for each class. Kings makes the classes who have high % on stam returns even more better.

Sorry if you did actually take in to acoount that already, but I couldnt tell if you you did or didnt.

That shiled wall question was funny though, i can imagine some nub saying that, even though every tank has their own version of shield wall now

On top of that i really agree with alot of what you said, I been thinking about it for some time, in that there shoulnt be such high differences in hp like this, when everyone has almost the same no of cds now.

[Talldar]

I can't believe how poor of a response and how wandering your post is. [...] With such high variances in tank performance (health, mitigation styles, avoidance) right now - who the hell do they design for?

Hm sorry that I don't agree with you, I guess. Before you go full out on attacking someone probably you should reconsider and try to understand what they said. I'm not a fan of too much balance - crucify me? I think it's more fun and more of a challenge if a game isn't defined by pure numbers and equality, but by variety.

Not every encounter is as hard to tank for every tank class. This is a good thing, to me. It's - obviously - not, to you. That's fine for me, but don't go out and tell me I'm stupid and just reposted what the original post said, for I did not.

What I meant with the "spontaneous idea" was the specific example of the ability I mentioned, not the general state of "mitigating magical damage with a shield" - which I didn't talk about, either. Much rather I suggested that splitting damage into "Magical" and "Physical" alone probably isn't enough, for fire may have a magical source, but logically still is a physical thing.

who the hell do they design for?

Does it matter? Do they have to design for anyone specific? Can't you live with an encounter that's just going to be difficult, to be handled differently by every one, so each tank/group has to come up with it's own solution?

If a mage finds out that he can exploit the bone shield an clear a Naxx25 wing he's all creative and big kudos to him. If the designers dare to not generically design towards the generic tanking role, then blame them?

There are boss fights where a mage/warlock/clothie has to tank one of the mobs - is this poor design because not everyone can do it? There are boss fights that require kiting a mob. Is this poor design because a melee-only group will have a hard time doing it?

[Liar]

Sorry if you did actually take in to acoount that already, but I couldnt tell if you you did or didnt.

They are included.

[Taelas]

Hmm. Very interesting topic.

At this point, I'm not sure how Druids can be balanced with the other classes. Due to their lack of Parry, they will always have less overall avoidance than the other classes, which means they need more EH to survive... which brings us to this topic.

So I suppose the only solution to the problem would be to make druids' Dodge equal to the other classes' Dodge+Parry+Miss, then equalize the health pools more. Druids will also get a semblance of Block next patch, giving only more reason for the health pools to be balanced.

Death Knights get a health bonus for not getting Block... but health is superior to Block overall (as Block doesn't affect magic damage). I suppose this could be fixed by making Block affect magic damage somehow. (This would obviously include the druid version.)

[Liar]

Does it matter? Do they have to design for anyone specific? Can't you live with an encounter that's just going to be difficult, to be handled differently by every one, so each tank/group has to come up with it's own solution?

It sure does matter. Ulduar fights will be harder than Naxx (and if they aren't, there is a bigger underlying problem) so bosses will be tuned tighter. They have 3 tools for that: Gear check, execution check and to a lesser extent class composition check. Now let's assume we are talking about a really hard boss where you need good gear, good execution and a non-retarded group composition (basically how Sarth3 is on 10 man before you get it on farm):

Gear check is easy to do for DPS and healers. They want them to do a specific amount of DPS and HPS for X time. But what about tanks? They want them to survive spikes - but just barely so it's a challenge. Now if they design around a Warrior the spikes cannot exceed 53k damage at once because anything else is a oneshot and unhealable barring external CDs (which would bring us back to Sarth which Blizz already said is taking it too far). So what are they going to do, design it so a Warrior can just live through it? That means a Druid can easily live through it because they have the better EH and MEH. Design it around a Druid? Then Warriors will die on the burst that is designed to challenge Druids.

They need to find the smallest common denominator for this which in our opinion should be MEH and EH so they can design tightly tuned encounters that are fun and not the snoozefest that is Naxx.

[Peca]

Source: Ghostcrawler, Lead Systems Designer

It's awesome that so many players have adopted the "bring the player, not the class" mantra. I think we managed to get that message across. Do remember however that its original context was that after you have the major buffs and debuffs covered that you will have room to bring who you want and generally a lot more flexibility on which classes you need to bring. It doesn't mean that you can put together any kind of contrived raid comp and then point the finger at us when your 12 prot warrior group wipes in Ulduar. But that also doesn't mean we are reneging on our promise that you can MT with any of four classes. Just remember thing are going to feel the least equitable on the hardest fights.

I think Xav is pointing on this,and I understand his thinking about upcoming content.Because we are not so equal at this point of game.That is my opinion ,but maybe I am wrong .

[Nicki]

In my opinion the value of avoidance should be boosted it was diminished to the extent that it wouldn't be overpowered but even as I gear up, im not at any point wanting more avoidance and likewise block although good for threat.

Avoidance and block affecting spells may be an idea.

I joined a naxx pug once as a healer guess what they group had taken a druid with 38k health buffed but he was using season 4 and the other healer was not as good as I am at playing a paladin. If the druid had 80 gear id have had no problem keeping them up solo however they were in S3/S4 which is not tank gear. They died repeatedly but they were taken because of their health pool and this is the big issue.

Health pool should not be the primary reason for a tank to be on a boss nor should the availability of cooldowns and im sorry death knight cooldowns (or other tank cooldowns) are going to need to be changed before they become the best progression tanks.

Likewise paladins are the bottom of the pack when it comes to tanking sarth (for progression) with only one cooldown that is useable on breath attacks. This is simply bad design where one tank is completely inferior and relies on external cooldowns like guardian spirit and actually reminds me of the fear mechanic bosses use.

Death Knights are as they stand the ultimate progression tanks with druids a close second because of their high health. My opinion is to increase the value of avoidance and possibly block somehow but reduce the value of health however I think thats probably impossible.

[Liar]

Hmm. Very interesting topic.

At this point, I'm not sure how Druids can be balanced with the other classes. Due to their lack of Parry, they will always have less overall avoidance than the other classes, which means they need more EH to survive... which brings us to this topic.

Here is the thing; I think most people think we want everyone to have exactly the same Health. That is not true. Health is only ONE slider to adjust EH and MEH, Armor and Stance reduction are the other two (and cooldowns you can use often like AMS and Barkskin).
Flavor should exist and if a Druid has, say, 5% less avoidance then he should have a bit more armor to compensate. The point being, a Druid would still slightly make a better tank for hard hitting mobs in the worst case scenario but not by the amount it is now. In return, Warriors would be slightly better on bosses where 5% are better than more armor (I can't think of one atm, so help me out here :P) but that's fine. That's flavor.

A Druid would have 22% more health if nothing changed in T10 (let alone EH and MEH because they have more armor reduction and a better stance modifier than Warriors) than a Warrior which is completely ridiculous. This is not flavor, this is imbalance.

[Mhoram]

So you don't want every tank to be the same, but you want them all to have the same health? And you think some tanks need more health, but when they throw a +stamina enchant on the PTRs, you're all against it because every warrior will use it? And then you talk about stacking stamina in progression fights, and how it's the right thing to do?

I just want to make sure we're all reading the same things here. Because I'm confused. If they're going to give other classes similar mechanics now (such as more block-like behavior for druids, Last Stand-type things for other classes, or whatever), then there has to be something left to differentiate them. If there isn't, then what's the point of having them at all? Just combine warrior, paladin, druid, deathknight into one class and have it be tank. You want to tank - grab that class.

And why is anyone even asking what Joe Sixpack PUG raid leader is asking anyway. Everyone's talking progression, and then that comes up? Who cares what Joe Sixpack PUG raid leader asks? Of course he's going to want the tank with the highest health, because he probably a) wants to be carried through the run, and b) doesn't know enough to know why health isn't the only thing that's important.

I just don't see why this is an issue now, when the game's been like this since launch (warriors had the most "Oh crap" tools, pallies have the AOE stuffs, druids had the largest health and armor pools because they can't grab a big shiny piece of metal and hold it up in front of the boss). Next topic gonna be on why everyone's wearing plate except the druids?

You can't say "we don't want each tank class to have the same stats" in the same breath you say "but in this tier gear, one class will have more than another, and that just ain't right". That's the game design - I don't know how they change that without really digging deep into the core of the game and making some big changes.

[Taelas]

Mhoram, we want them to have roughly the same EFFECTIVE health.

For magic damage? This is pretty much just your health. Flat reductions like Defensive Stance cut into it, but all classes have their own version of this.