Are you saying that it was easier to shine as a prot Warrior in BC and that in WoTLK those advantages have been removed so as to expose mediocre skilled players?Originally Posted by jere
Quoting this because I think it cuts to the heart of the issue. Too much of the community has their heads up their ass looking at WWS reports and raid mockup tools to realize that exceptional players > current game quirks. This is the only thing that I can guarantee you will be true when this expansion is over about tanks.
I personally (opinion here) think it takes a lot more skill to excel as a warrior tank. I think everything up to and including the BC definitely weighed in favor of a warrior, so a lot of warriors who weren't necessarily the best of the best still did very well back then. With the changes to not only warriors, but the other tanks, I do think it makes a lot of the warriors that simply aren't as skilled stand out more. That isn't to say they can't do it or that they suck, but simply they aren't as skilled as others.
The big change here was the change to dps and how tanks generated it. I mean, you can look at the entire warrior community. Some complain about only being able to do 1.3k-1.5k dps (and of course TPS associated). Some others say they can do 2k-2.5k DPS. Still others hit up in the upper 3k's. The content isn't challenging yet, so we all have access to the same gear mostly. So the delta has to be something other than the gear and the class (they do play a part mind you, but not enough to be that wide a range). Some people have mastered it and know how to squeeze out every bit of DPS/TPS they can, even to the extent of using threat gear (everyone has that capability). Some seem to be missing something, but it can't be something that is not there due to being a warrior intrinsic. All I can come up with to explain the wide range of differences is skill.
EDIT: And I know the whole "skill" argument has the connotation of "you suck", but I definitely don't mean that. If anything, I am not as good as most pallies are, so I have no leg to stand on in that matter.
First off I agree very much with Jere and Kolben.
Second Tom I am not sure why you think I was insulting you, was not my intent.
Thirdly, I have seen 4 different people in this thread say that Sarth 3d was an "example" of tanking imbalances....if that is the only fight (or fights 10-25) then it cannot be an example, it is the sole instance of this supposed imbalance. An example would indicate that their are multiple occurences, and that just isn't happening.
I will say, that many warriors of mediocre (or even less) skill became main tanks for guilds in various levels of progression merely on the fact that they were actually warriors and not druids or paladins.Are you saying that it was easier to shine as a prot Warrior in BC and that in WoTLK those advantages have been removed so as to expose mediocre skilled players?
In fact the mentality still exists today to some extent, though it is fading. I had been guilded with a reroll once, that rolled a warrior, and wanted to main tank TBC encounters merely on the factor that they were a warrior, despite my own gear being substantively higher, and having much more experience. Last week, one of our warriors left, and another warrior sent me a tell asking me if he was now going to be the Main Tank, because he was the longest standing Warrior in the guild...
My main until just recently was a Warrior tank, and I'm re rolling a DK tank to help with raid progression. I will say, that Warriors had to work twice as hard as the other classes, but the work paid off with the results being able to tank anything and everything...the same existed for all tank classes. That's how people earned the MT spot, by putting in more work then the next guy.
Really, it's the people that didnt want to put the work in to learn their class, & still raid end game content that's responsible for this mess. The game has shifted from the few and proud to whoever QQ's the most wins. I've been guilty of it too, but allot of Warriors still have the; I tank the boss, you tank everything else attitude. And the uproar of people after ONE...ONE test came back showing a DK favorable over a Warrior or Pally really made me laugh...There are allot of very smart people on this website (and other websites) that know how to bring up numbers under certain situations & show one class favorably over another, and even smarter players that know what buttons to push to get the developers to at least take a 2nd look at a certain class.
Bottom line is, if things keep going down this path, people will loose interest, and WoW will go the way of Everquest and the like. I know I'll probably get flamed for some of my comments, but that's what I've seen over the last few months, I know allot of people are wondering why Blizz is even listening to the QQ's, math as proof or not. Keep the classes separate with their own special abilities, and let the players decide which best suites them...making all classes the same is a recipe for fail...I use this as an example, because it's similar to the discussion of making all tanks the same...it's like communism...looks great on paper, but when applied, it has disastrous results.
Last edited by Shake; 03-10-2009 at 02:38 PM.
Ok, there seem to be two repeated falsehoods here that are really clogging up the discussion:
1) There was only 1 (sarth3D) or maybe 2 (malygos) encounters where DK/Druids had an advantage, so why the QQ?
Answer: Those weren't the only encounters that showed the imbalance, all raid bosses do. The difference is that those are the only two bosses that are challenging enough to matter. Even a really sad warrior can tank his/her way through Naxx 10. That doesn't meant the problems aren't there, it just means they're covered up by the trivial nature of the encounters. Since Ulduar is not going to be as trivial as Naxx, this was going to be a much larger problem.
2) Let's let all the classes be unique and have their strengths, why homogenize?
Answer: I'm sorry, but these "differences" were in large part going to mean "tanking trash" or "tanking challenging encounters" come Ulduar. We already tried having those types of class "strengths", remember? Warriors tanked everything. But people didn't like that, so instead the goal was to let all the classes be more or less at tanking parity.
That goal was not achieved, but (as discussed above) largely irrelevant because initial raid content was a good deal easier than previous raids, and gear was very prevalent even before entering Naxx.
Summary: Sorry, but don't use misleading arguments to downplay what are serious (and now being addressed) issues. No one is saying there's a problem with one class or another doing better at a given boss, the problem was that there was a serious mechanics imbalance, and it was just largely hidden during Wrath raids. With Ulduar coming out it was important to fix it. As we just covered in another thread, it looks like with CDs DKs are still doing at least as much mitigation against physical damage as warriors even after the current round of nerfs. And they can kick out more DPS. No one is saying "omg, nerf them into the ground!!!", the nerfs were called for to solve a true imbalance; the devs knew it and had clearly been planning some of it prior to anyone bringing it up. It's fine and all to say that one warrior here we don't know may have lost his job to a DK because he wasn't as good (may be the case, I don't know either of them) but the reality was even with equal skill and equal gear his guild would have been making a good decision to bench him for the DK.
Ulduar Ulduar Ulduar Uldufarkingar
Can anyone show me a WWS where a Warrior or Paladin tried to Main Tank a PTR boss and failed, and on a following attempt you had a Druid or DK breeze through it?
This is completely blown out of proportion. The first guild on my server to get Sarth +3D did so with a Paladin main tank (Horde). I just am not going to buy that the disparity is that large that Paladins and Warriors simply can not tank the content period.
Sarth +3D is designed to be hard!. Not everyone is going to get it done, if a guild can't do it because they have a Warrior or Paladin tanking Sarth, maybe they just aren't skilled enough to complete the encounter. I know I know, yeah yeah yeah, but before you throw me a DK or Druid example at me show me a WWS, Video, something that shows that a competent guild can do Sarth3D with a Druid but not a Shield Tank.
Some of you went hog wild on threat gearing and haven't done much of anything to amp up your survivability at all. You aren't going to get max survival in a max threat set, it's never worked that way so why would you roll into a raid zone gemmed and enchanted for threat and then piss and moan about the damage you take? Warriors are joined at the hip with their gear, there is no mechanic for the class that this does not apply to.
Also, I think there is a lot of hype around Ulduar which if it is even remotely as difficult once live as you think it will be ... that will be a major design fail on Blizzard's part. Sure a few of the encounters on hard mode should be hard, hard as hell. Let's not assume that if things don't change that a Warrior or Paladin wont' be welcome/able to tank a progression raid in Udluar, that's just hysteria.
Again, it's not "can't", it's that everyone should have to put in similar time/skill/gear for similar success, and that just wasn't happening, sorry. And it wasn't just on Sarth and Malygos.
Some DK specs have practically solo tanked Sarth3D. Elitist jerks showed a frost DK solo tanking Patchwerk with a single healer and taking all the hateful strikes. These are very real imbalance issues, and the fact that everyone can tank Patchwerk doesn't change the fact that something was broken.
I personally want to reroll as a voidwalker, just read a thread about one tanking sarth on a 3 drake kill. THOSE THINGS ARE OP!!!!
Feel ridiculous yet?
Either paladins are more skilled than warriors by default, or the difference in difficulty of playing those two classes is very big. If one class needs much more skill and gear to achieve the same effects as another one, that is an imbalance, or a niche created on purpose. One class having a niche and anotehr not having one, that is another imbalance. I do not think that poster you replied to is less skilled than his fellow tanks, but to achieve better results than them, he would have to be more skilled. There is nod enying that paladins are cyrrently highest dps/tps tanks, scoreboards prove it. I am not saying that is wrong, someone has to be first, but talking about "skill" is covering of a viable complaint - warriors have no niches, no -useful gimmicks- (not in WotLK), so there is really no reason to get warrior tank over others, if they have equal skill and gear. Ofc there is also no real reason to NOT take warrior tank, unless content will ebcome harder and all those little advantages of other tanks will become more meaningful.
Well bear in mind, a paladin has to master 3 different roles (healing, dps, tanking), while a warrior only has to master 2. There are 3 trees each, but roles tend to take a much larger skill change than trees. The classes are different in mechanics as well. I don't know if that makes the difficulty differences fair or not, but just bear in mind that there are other factors that play into it.
This isn't totally true. I already know what ever is listed will get brushed off (from past experience), so I won't go down that path, but I definitely don't agree with that statement. Now you may not like their niches/gimmicks, but that doesn't mean there aren't any.warriors have no niches, no -useful gimmicks- (not in WotLK)
And if you'd read the thread closely you'd have noticed that I applauded the good use of game mechanics. It still has nothing to do with tanking balance (they still needed tanks in that takedown), and the balance issue does not hinge on Sarth3d.
Yes, but probably not for the reasons you were implying. It just seems like some sort of strange parallel universe where the people concerned about tank balance repeat the the sarth3d encounter itself is not the issue, that the imbalance was evident across the game, and people keep responding "It's just one encounter!!!!".Feel ridiculous yet?
Edit: I agree Jere, warriors have several interesting and useful "gimmicks". There's no problem IMO with variety in tanks, the problem now is making their survivability closer together, and the PTRs are making good progress on that.
Yes, well, I know hwo it always goes too, so let me rephrase: warriors do not excel at any of the basic fields of tanking - neither mitigation, single target tps/dps, aoe dps/tps, magic mitigation. We do have gimmicks but they are all extremely limited or situational. There is a way to make mroe of tehm useful and beneficial in raids, but this is not done in WotLK.
Tom my most recent reply was not aimed at you, I try to avoid writing comments directly addressing people in an attempt not to insult/inflame. As to your other comment, please tell me what other encounters/areas of the game are improved or made less difficult by playing one tanking class over another. If their is more than that encounter than I will be the first person to apologize, but I (warrior) have tanked everything other than that encounter, and don't consider myself an amazing tank by any stretch. In my limited interaction with DK tanks of the same or higher gear and skill level than myself I have noticed 2 things.....they usually do at leas 200 more dps than myself tanking the same things (bastards) and they seem to get larger healthpools at a lower level of gear than warriors. Neither one of those things seem very game breaking to me, so maybe that is why when I read these threads I shake my head and wonder what the big deal is.....
Honestly, rather then nerfing a class, I would rather see Warriors get buffed for a change...like the shout we have last 30 minutes instead of 3...Pallies got that, but Warriors (once again) were ignored. I'd like to see Warriors have larger crit blocks, and a little more magic mitigation.
But of course, D stance is getting nerfed, so we'll take more damage on a progression instance that's supposed to have bosses that hit like trains. Every action brings a reaction...now that people have successfully lobbied to Nerf DK's to the floor; that means future nerfs are in store for all the other classes to even things out. How about lobbying to get some buffs to bring all classes on even ground. I just want to be able to walk in with my warrior and know that it's a really tough encounter that's going to challenge me. I like being able to walk up to a boss and tank him better then another class, regardless of whether the encounter is geared for me or not. Where there is a will, there is a way...and eventually, ALL content becomes trivial.
Fair enough; I thought the "feel silly" part was aimed directly at me. Apologies for taking it personally/making it personal.
Sure, as I think this is exactly where the misunderstanding comes in. The DK survivability imbalance is evident in every single encounter I've tanked in Wrath, including Naxx10. The hard numbers are in BTW, and I recommend everyone go read them: Pre 3.1 Exhaustive Tank comparison. Post 3.0.8 and pre current PTRs warriors and Pallies were simply the least survivable tanks under almost all circumstances. And that is before cooldowns are factored in, and of course pre-PTR nerfs DKs had by far the best CDs for mitigation.As to your other comment, please tell me what other encounters/areas of the game are improved or made less difficult by playing one tanking class over another. If their is more than that encounter than I will be the first person to apologize, but I (warrior) have tanked everything other than that encounter, and don't consider myself an amazing tank by any stretch.
I know, people want to believe the myth about DKs being squishier when their CDs are down, but at least since 3.0.8 it just hasn't been true. Now, that doesn't mean I couldn't tank all of the raid encounters, I can and did (and I did it alongside an excellent DK tank, who will be an excellent tank even after the balance issue is straightened out).
So why didn't it matter? Because 1) the encounters were simply so easy that for the most part it didn't matter (if I'm not getting close to dying, who really cares that the DK can do it with 15% less heals...we're both getting through just fine!) and specifically 2) gear was incredibly plentiful outside of Naxx. So by the time we all stepped foot in Naxx we already were starting to worry about threat stats and avoidance rather than just EH. That further obscures the differences, for the same reason in number 1.
So on Gluth (since that's a 2 tank boss encounter) our DK could spec hybrid DPS, do way more damage than me, and still have the same survivability. Numerically he would have actually been a better choice for the decimates due to CDs, but I tanked them because I could without a significant extra danger to ther aid (woot for avoidance trinkets!) and because his AOE DPS was better, and burning down the zombie chows is of course a larger deciding factor in the outcome of that encounter.
So quick recap; survivability imbalance clearly there, in this case leading to a greater DPS disparity too, but in practice no one worries about it, because it didn't hinder our success. So there are two lessons there: there were clear survivability differences (in the actual mitigation and avoidance) and it was irrelevant to group success.
I could do this again and again with the same results. The druid/DK survivability imbalance is real, but prior to 3.1 it had little effect except perhaps on the hardest encounters (it does matter on malygos if you don't outgear it when you get there).
Now come 3.1, not only is Ulduar being tuned to be more difficult, but of course there won't be nearly as much (if any) Ulduar-level gear available outside of Ulduar. Which means it will be a lot more like progression. And then the differences would matter. Probably not in my guild, as we're more casual raiders and will probably do the 10-mans first (And we don't have a cut-throat attitude towards tanking). But it doesn't change the fact that the classes were in serious need of rebalancing before this content came out.
You seem to be saying that because it hasn't had a material effect on more than a couple of encounters we shouldn't worry about it, but that would mean not reacting until it was too late, rather than addressing it now, during the major patch before new content comes out. At that point it could be months of sitting around waiting for a patch when it really does matter, and I'd rather see it happen now in between progression.
Have you considered your spec for that same survivability measurements? You are specced 15/5/51 (or at least your signature says you are). The same as he specced for added dps because he could afford to, aren't you speccing for added dps and threat because you can afford to? I am sure their is a spec you could use that had a much larger mitigation/avoidance flavor to it...but you do not have to. What is the difference between that and your dk adding some dps talents?
Protection warriors have, in fact, been pretty consistently buffed. Most prominently and recent, the 3.0.2 patch, which made protection warriors better and more interesting tanks than in 2.x by leaps and bounds.
Assuming that "buffs" and "nerfs" should occur based on some cycle where every class gets buffed in turn is tremendously shortsighted. Class mechanics should be adjusted to correct defects and deficiencies in the game design (such as balance issues, or gameplay being boring), not in an attempt to appease a rabid and constantly unhappy playerbase.
I am, in fact, rather unfond of the words "buff" and "nerf" (or at least the way they are used). They have a very passive-aggressive quality. They imply a theory of game design where the designer is a parent dishing out rewards and punishments based on whim rather than in order to make the game better as a whole, and where players are like children vying for favors.
That is because content is too easy. You have Sartharion 3D, and to lesser extent Malygos. But as PTR proves, when boss damage scales, the difference becomes bigger -> patchwerk tank test by Premonition. You can't really see who is the strongest guy if both of tehm have to pick up 5 kgs, to sue an example.
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