Threat and DPS scaling on tanks.
Druids get leather "dps" gear for tanking. All their gear has some form of dps stats on it.
Paladins just stack stamina and some avoidance to go with it. Stam = spellpower = dps = tps. Some of their attacks can not be parried or resisted.
DK's have an everflowing runepower and a dps weapon. And don't even get dmg penalty in their stance (I think, may be wrong about dmg penalty). Some of their attacks can not be parried.
Now lets look at warriors. If they want threat, they actually have to gear for it, at the cost of survivability. That's where vigilance comes in.
I generally gear for threat. Never have to use vigilance. In fact I tend to forget I have it.
Then I go tank Malygos or drakes on Sarth3D and add some more survivability to my gear at the cost of threat. Vigilance the arcane mage blowing all his CD's on drakes or the lock who teleports out of vortex to dps early on Malygos.
As I see it, we have to choose threat or survivability and when we pick survivability vigilance helps with threat. I just hope it doesn't scale too much and we end up with such a big gap that we will actually "need" 15% vigilance to be actually able to tank hardmode Ulduar bosses without loosing either aggro or survivability. But never the less we are loosing threat stats which in turn reduces our dps. Would you bring a tank to Ulduar who can do 3k dps or settle with 1.3k dps ?
Disclaimer: My numbers can be exaggerated or even wrong. I'm hoping to bring up a point I've been a bit worried about without exact math. Bear with meAnd if there's nothing to worry about then I'm a happy bunny
Actually, SP is one of our weaker threat stats. We gear the similar to a warrior. Our threat stats include STR, AP, BV, Hit, and EXP with SP coming towards the end of the list. Stacking STA doesn't do much for us at all considering that it only gives us 0.3 SP per point of STA and SP is already our weaker stat.Originally Posted by Garbid
Please don't spread incorrect information.
#5 about Block?
I know it's a subject of some discussion on here.
I'd like to see one on threat too, and I'm sure that will be a topic in the near future.
Disclaimer: My numbers can be exaggerated or even wrong. I'm hoping to bring up a point I've been a bit worried about without exact math. Bear with meI stand corrected. But you gotta admit, when it comes to pure threat stats like hit and expertise, warriors are much more dependant on them then paladins. And thats the point I was trying to make. Warriors are more dependant on threat stats for threat/dps then other classes, and there for forces us to choose between survivability or threat.
Extreme example:
Take paladin and warrior in pure avoidance/EH gear, who does more threat/dps ? Paladin right ?
Now give the paladin some mixed gear for threat/survivability (staying high on survivability without excluding some of the very best threat pieces). For the warrior to reach same tps/dps, he needs to go even further for exp/hit ending up 1k less health and 1-2% less avoidance ?
Again, I don't have any numbers to support any of this and kinda lazy to do the math, and I apologize if I'm being blatantly wrong or ignorant. But I'd love it if anyone can dispute this with numbers.
#5 Block
I'd also like to see it raised publicly rather than privately. I think it can be perceived as if Tankspot were formulating a biased argument, preparing rebuttals in advance and then throwing it out there with the intention of distorting play balance. (Very much in the way politicians operate - and who trusts them?). Note, I'm not saying that that is what Tankspot is doing, I'm saying that's how the site could be perceived and perhaps is being perceived on the official forums at the moment.
Let's see #5 discussed without the secrecy this time.
Just throwing this out there... our threat is balanced around dps leather, as are our tanking stats.
My drood tanking simulator (Credit to Celik for help with concepts):
http://www.jinxwow.com/forums/index....&st=0#entry641
As much as I don't think it's "fair" that druids get to tank in dps gear without worrying about defense, and death knights get to tank with any tree and do a lot of dps at the same time, I'm not compelled to think it's a huge problem. The new defensive stance changes help a little.
If block was changed to be a more attractive stat, with block value also changing in the same way, then it would add more damage down by Damage Block, critical block, and increase shield slams. You kill two birds with one stone.
Is threat really a big issue among tanks? The highest dpsers in my guild are around 5k, with two exceptional guys at 6k, and I have no problems holding aggro in my EH/Avoidance gear except for on Malygos. The beginning of the fight is sometimes rocky if that initial shield slam doesn't land, but that's where, as a warrior, I've always had the most trouble.
I honestly think the #5 should go against the grain, and maybe, highlight something that affects all tanks. The previous ones have simply been biases arguments against druids and deathknights. Maybe the new one should focus on all the tanks.
We could point out how with the PTR cooldown times, DK's will take significantly more damage than any other tank. We could also point out, that with the new block mechanic for druids, how does it scale in place of paladins and warriors? We could go on about how Paladins and Warriors are simply better tanks for a single hard-mode encounter, then get them nerfed so the other tanks can tank those encounters as well. Yes, i'm bitter about the DK nerfs. Why you ask?
I'll admit DK's had their strengths. In my guild, their first and all of their subsiquent Sarth3D kills were made with a warrior tanking. As a DK, i've always been on whelp duty. It was the slanted posts by Xav and Co that caused Deathknights to have every single one of their tanking cooldowns nerfed. It also caused every single tanking specific talent, with the exception of one, to be nerfed as well.
Honestly, how do you expect a tank to survive when they lose 1/2 of their cooldown maintanability, their armor nerfed, lost 10 percent avoidance right off the top, removed the other tank cooldown, and had their other cooldown changed to be complete garbage.
Now, on top of that, they've decided all tanks threat, except paladins was too high. They have nerfed BoSanc so that I as a DK, lose at a minimum 1.5k TPS. I shudder to think how this will effect warriors threat, or druids for that matter. There is a percieved exception that DK's don't need hit or expertise for threat. Dead wrong, at a minium we need to be hit capped for melee, frost on the other hand, needs to be spell hit capped. All Dk's need to be expertise soft-capped.
Warriors are the same. I'm unfamilier with Druids mechanics so I don't know. EH and survivability means nothing without the means to hold threat. I push around 7k threat with Bosanc. That drops down to ~5.5k without it. All my dps push around 5-6k dps. Without their own threat reducing abilities.. my melee, warriors and DK's to be specific, will pull threat on me.
I've played a tank warrior at 60 and at 70, I even tanked on a paladin during BC. To say that I'm new is not an accurate statement. Tanking has never been an easy job. As a tank you always come prepared, gemmed, enchanted, flasked, and knowlegable. I picked up DK's because they required more skill than a simple priority system. There are true rotations, on threat and on tanking. It is difficult to master all of them. Once you do though, you shine through.
How about this one. I'm a tank, I play the class that tanks the best. Whether that means I have to level up my warrior, paladin, or level up a new druid, i'll do it. My guilds progression is my top priority. The tanking crew's job is to make sure that we progress. If I have to sit out on a hard-mode boss so that we progress, i'm strapping on my dps gear and doing it. If that means I have to spec wonky, and have no fluid motion to it, I will.
The days of the purest tank is gone. Multi-tasking, micro-management, and fulfilling multiple roles is what is going on now folks. I listen to the pod-cast and I understand what he's saying. Hell, I even agree with it. My guild has already discussed what dual-spec's well be going for. I'll give you a hint at it. Our paladin's will have one tank spec, one ret spec. Our druids have a Bear spec, and a dps spec. Our warriors have a boss spec and a trash spec. I'll have a full single target dps spec, and an boss tank spec. The other DK has two tank spec's. One for bosses and one for trash.
Guess what that means. For the betterment of my raid I won't be tanking some bosses. Guess what else that means. On DPS checks, we won't have to sub out tanks in for dps. Most of them can switch to their dps spec and we can kill a boss, and progress farther.
The next topic should be on the focus of all the tank classes strengths, and how to exploit them to our raids advantage. With four different classes, we should learn how each one excells at certain fights, instead of working on getting them nerfed so all tanks can tank all bosses.
Blood thats a very cynical post. Dont make the mistake of assuming tankspot rules any sort of a roost. Blizzard are are a very successful professional games company, and they cannot be swayed or manipulated by a forum built and run by gamers. If they were that weak, they would have dissolved a long time ago, and wow would not exist. As one astute poster said on the forums, correlation =/ causation. If you're concerned, why dont you get on the PTR and come up with some statistical proof, rather than knee-jerking against a rebalancing act that you knew was coming.
#5 Is about how to get Paladins nerfed in the name of Balance. One of the plans is to remove Consecrate from their trees and replace it with Divine Swipe of Righteous Justice.
Actually, we are just as dependent on hit as warriors are (actually a bit more than warriors since some of our threat abilities like Holy Shield work off of spell hit, which has a relatively higher cap). We are less affected by expertise, our threat is balanced around more threat stats total.
I can't comment much on whether we are more or less dependent on the stats for threat. I think our threat is probably easier for the average person to pick up and that warrior threat takes more skill to manage. For example, you quote 1.3K dps and I have seen others say 2K dps, yet I can look at some of the posters here and see people hitting upper 3Ks in DPS. I think a lot of it is simply skill.
In our guild we have had many warrior tanks. I can tell you they all vary in terms of DPS output wildly. One our previous warrior tanks who stopped playing to do some Navy stuff could easily keep the same level of threat as me. One of our new guys cant. They had about the same level of gear yet there is a large discrepancy in DPS between them. I think it is a skill thing.
Note that none of us use threat gear for that fight. I know if I stack avoidance gear to infinitum, that I don't generate near as much threat as I do in a BV set. Going from a threat set to an avoidance set does seem to affect my TPS a lot, but it could simply be a skill thing.
I think what you are seeing isn't so much a product of the warrior class, but a product of skill levels. Any of those high level dps parses you see will be done in threat sets (yes even the pallies...remember, a bv set is a threat set for us). In general gear, all of our guild's tanks (that are skilled) generate similar amounts of dps/tps.
Also, a lot of it is that you are tossing around buzzwords to back this, which really sound good, but tend to not really hold water (not that I think you do it purposely though). For example, take your blurb on DK's:
Everflowing rune power, a dps weapon, and no stance penalties all sound great on paper, but you can't compare them in a vacuum like that. They have a totally different threat system from warriors and are balanced around that. They have to deal with spell hit mechanics (you don't) and they have all their main stuff on cooldowns (not all of your stuff is). They have to stack diseases to get desired levels of threat, and you don't. They also have to manage quite a bit more survivability cooldowns for mitigation/avoidance than any of us do. They do have an RP dump similar to your rage dump, but theirs (I believe...someone verify) is on a GCD. There are a lot more factors to consider than just those. That's not to say they are worse (or better)...just different.DK's have an everflowing runepower and a dps weapon. And don't even get dmg penalty in their stance (I think, may be wrong about dmg penalty). Some of their attacks can not be parried.
Comparing things in a vacuum like that isn't a good idea. The systems aren't fully comparable.
Last edited by jere; 03-10-2009 at 05:22 AM.
Vote #2 for block. Please talk about this worthless mechanic and suggest ways it could be made useful.
For those in this thread blaming Tank Spot for the DK nerfs I refer you to Satrina's comment:
Anyone who believes the Cooldown post in anyway affected the changes Blizzard made is looking for people other then Blizzard to blame.
Honestly, Blizzard was probably already in the process of compiling the build when that post was made. The choices on how/what to change had been made at least a week or two ago. And the coding for those changes done in the previous week, so in all reality they may have even been done prior to the testing on the Patchwerk Test mob on the realms.
Unless it's an emergency System Breaking issue (IE Live PRODUCTION realms are crashing and not coming up or similar issue) changes of the sweeping nature of the DK changes are not made and put onto a test realm in 48 hours. The risks involved with making a changes that fast just don't justify it.
There were several changes made in the PTR, which, were quickly changed again. To say that Vivendi is unwilling or unable to make quick code changes is not true. They have done it in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. They listen to whine posts as well. How else do you think Brew of the Year, The Love Fool, Gheto-hearthing, 30m Hearthstones were changed? It wasn't because Blizzard has simply been working on the code. All of those changes came as the result of whine-fest posts on Blizzards forums.
When I say that Xav and Co caused a great deal of these Deathknight nerfs, I mean it. Look at the tanking topics. None of them deal with how to make the tanks seperate but equal. They are directed at bringing all other tank classes in line with warriors. They are not "Tank Topics", they are warrior topics masked as tanking topics. Quote me a postive thing said about druids or deathknights in those initial posts.
All of this stemmed from One, yes just one, boss in a specific hard mode, that a warrior was not better at tanking. Funny thing is, warriors have been tanking the encounter the whole time. My old guild, and even another guild uses a warrior solely on that fight. If your DPS is right you only eat 3-4 breaths. We used paladins raid-bubble anyways simple because it helps the twilight torment, drake tanks, sarth tank, and add tank. Guess what, it also makes the breaths survivable by a stam/FR geared warrior. Look at your raid comp and direct it to be successful.
The nerfs wen't too far. I only have my cooldowns. Without them, I'm far squisher than any warrior, paladin, or druid. Because i'm without them for 1/2 the time of any time I tank, I'm simply not the prefered tank, for any fight. WoTN bieng nerfed, means I can only take on big hit every 15 seconds, or I'm squished. My avoidance took a dump, which means I'd need my cooldowns to survive, good thing the cooldown is 2 minutes! That way I can't ever have them up.
Bottom line is, DK's are too squishy. The cooldowns are what let us tank, if the cooldown is too long, we won't be able to tank anything because we'll explode once they go down.
Considering GC actually implied that Warriors and Paladins are balanced well against Ulduar bosses, what does it tell you that they had to nerf DKs and Druids?
I think our threat scaling, specially for AoE threat, is a huge issue for Warriors right now.
Second to that, I think our utility and dps while not tanking really needs to be addressed in raid environments.
Rage generation is another big issue for me (at least while not tanking). I'm simply not a fan of being largely dead weight for a raid group when I'm not the one with the lvl 83 boss pounding on me.
If anything Xav did caused the DK nerfs it was his testing on the Patchwerk Test Boss on the Test Realm where DKs WAY out performed any other tank. To act like DKs where not about to be introduced to a nerf stick is just blind and the same behavior you are accusing Xav/Ciderhelm/Satrina etc of having.
DK's are a new class that is new to tanking. Paladins and Druids (though Druids more) went through this at the beginning of TBC where they bounced around in effectiveness as Blizzard figured out how to balance them and their scaling.
If they have trulyover nerfed DKs and you can arrange to run the same tests in game that Xav ran to prove it, then I'm sure that Blizzard will listen and bring you back in line. But when one tank out survives the other tanks by such a large margin they need to be nerfed, no matter the class.
And once again if you think they made BALANCE changes in 48 hours you need to go buy a tinfoil hat. There was NO reason for them to rush a balance change into the test realm. All of the situations you listed where the change was made QUICKLY they had a limited time because of the events in question. The rest while announced did not get rushed into a build. These changes where already planned well before the Cooldown post where made.
As well, if folks where to take the time and energy to generate posts on changes that need to be made to keep DKs competitive and balanced with the other tanks similar to the amount of energy they have put into their posts, and the concepts where fair, I'm sure that they would support those posts.
Meh, I've been accused of being the cause of nerfs several times over the years. People who are firmly convinced that players have some ultimate sway over the dev team are unlikely to ever change their mind. It's not worth wasting time worrying about or trying to defend against.
Got a question? Try here: Evil Empire Guides and here: Tankspot Guides and Articles Library first!
I don't have the rescources to run the tests on Patchwork on the PTR. For the sake of balance, would Xav re-run those tests to see how those changes have affected the classes? Is the new druid block mechanic in the game? Could Devium re-run the test using all three tree's? Are the new glyphs on the PTR so that those spec's could be tested and adjusted? I mean, if were all in it for making all four tank classes viable, with the latest round of adjustements, those patchwork tests should be re-run to prove that all tank classes and spec's can hold about equal water on the tanking test mob.
Edit: I'm not saying DK's didn't need to be nerfed. They did, but, these changes I feel were a bit overboard.
Last edited by Blóódfrenzy; 03-10-2009 at 06:56 AM. Reason: Added comment for clarification.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks