Should Taunts Really Miss Bosses?

[Martie]

And thats exactly the point why should 5% be any different to 95% .. Even patchwork had and enrage close to death that used to wipe groups.

This whole topic is flawed and I get the point just violently disagree with it .. I will lobby to get your solitaire "cheat button" installed for you all.

Patchwerk doesn't wipe you if you have perfect execution of the fight, and it's not about wiping. Wiping is part of the game.
But I don't like games with a random wipe chance. I don't like it when games have a "you die and there is nothing you could have done about it" factor in them. So I run around taunt-hit capped. I feel I must. I feel that I lose a glyph slot because of it - I can't experiment with several glyph options because I need to be taunt hit capped or run the risk of that random wipe chance.
It's kinda like... giving a boss a chance to do a nasty enrage whenever a melee class hits him with more then 2 white attacks per second. That would force rogues to use slow mainhand weapons, and being forced in a direction like that is no fun.

[Kojiyama]

I'm guessing the people who think that Taunt resists are fun never actually did 4 Horsemen when it was difficult progression content.

[Kahmal]

I'm guessing the people who think that Taunt resists are fun never actually did 4 Horsemen when it was difficult progression content.

lol

[Kahmal]

I'm guessing the people who think that Taunt resists are fun never actually did 4 Horsemen when it was difficult progression content.

lol

[uglybbtoo]

I'm guessing the people who think that Taunt resists are fun never actually did 4 Horsemen when it was difficult progression content.

Did both the original and new Naxx as progression .. yeah you actually had to know how to tank was that so bad.

Bit like stance dancing on nightbane .. ah but that was too hard too and got removed :=)

[Kojiyama]

Yeah, it's good to know my skill shows in server-side RNG.

[Martie]

Did both the original and new Naxx as progression .. yeah you actually had to know how to tank was that so bad.

Yes, because there being an x% chance of simply failing at something that is an essential part of the fight has something to do with knowing how to tank.
I remember my first time in Naxx. It was my first time doing any serious raid tanking as well - we had to work around paladin's lack of a normal taunt as well, it was annoying.

[Teran]

I apologize in advance for length, I've been quite busy lately and fell behind.

Dropping your stacks is a lot easier them most people think, many people stay behind the Iceblock until there stack completly drops off, what they dont know is that they're actually wasting valuable time doing that. If you look closely at Sindragosa in phase 3 you'll notice that she pulses an Arcane Explosion like animation about every 3 seconds. Thats the magic debuff she applies, so really all you need to do is dip behind the Iceblock until your around 3 seconds wait for her to pulse again and then run back out even if you still have the debuff because it will fall off before she reapplies it.

We are aware of the animation however we have found that the moment of highest risk in the fight is a taunt switch just before or during a frost breath. We were at one point losing one or both tanks often when this happened so we decided to spend a little more time letting stacks drop so that the healers would not need to be switching targets in the midst of a high damage attack and could keep focused on a single tank.

Your method is preferable for overall efficiency but my guild just isn't at that point currently because we have limited healing resources.

Taunts miss for all classes, and they really shouldn't. Such a stupid thing that they miss, you have few oh shit buttons otherwise to grab back aggro during some boss fights, and the last thing you want is Lich King pimp slapping your DPS around because your taunt missed, or a Shambling Horror turning and smacking your ranged upside the head and one shotting them.

Attacks miss too, do you think hit rating should be removed from the game? Your argument seems to be that taunts missing make the game harder and they should be removed because that would make the game easier because the dps will no longer be getting pimp slapped. Maybe the dps should instead watch their threat... a taunt can't miss if it never needs to be used.

Taunting isn't exciting to begin with. Taunt's may have been meant to miss or not dunno. But IMHO a taunt should never miss. I hate the fact that I need to glyph for Righteous Defense just to reach 17% hit. I mean at least put it on the melee hit and not spell hit cap.

Taunting isn't exciting? I suppose it's not if you never miss. If you want to have a more exciting raid, drop all your hit gear and the glyph. If on the other hand you want to be a good tank, do your job and make sure the boss doesn't go kill the raid in an exciting fashion.

It doesn't dumb it down. Especially for classes with only one taunt. If a taunt misses, there's nothing you can do until it comes back off of CD, or until someone other than you manages to find a way to quickly shift threat to you. That's not fun, nor complicated, nor an interesting mechanic.

There are many ways to make tanking interesting and exciting, and something where skilled tanks can excel. Keeping taunts on spell hit so that they miss even when you're "hit capped" for most of your abilities is not one of those ways.

There is always something that can be done. Classes may have only one taunt, but every tanking class also has one fixate which forces the enemy to attack you without adjusting your threat level for a certain amount of time... enough time for your real taunt to come off cooldown. If you miss two in a row, gem for hit. In my current gear with the glyph, I miss maybe one taunt every other week. When this happens twice a month I am generally in a position where it either doesn't matter, or I can blow my aoe fixate and the problem is solved.

Darksend explained it pretty well, its no fun failing all you can eat on Sindy due to a taunt miss and the tank having no fall back second taunt. Wasn't fun, or exciting, just frustrating.

I have to disagree there. The only reason you might fail is if your tanks are unprepared or improperly gemmed and glyph'd for the fight. Honestly, who in their right mind would even attempt that without having their taunt miss chance removed? If you were frustrated, you have no one but the tank who missed the taunt to blame for not showing up to the raid prepared.

Have fun working out a 8% hit set that contains either high HP or high frost resistance to tank heroic Sindragosa.

I have main tanked heroic Sindragosa with hit (including taunt with glyph) and expertise (parry) capped and 70K+ hp. The other tank and I sat down and looked at the fight. We realized only her frost breath is any threat at all to a tank and that can easily be negated with a tight rotation or proactive use of cooldowns and trinkets so we chose to tank the fight without any frost resist gear and it worked out... Actually we had spent quite a bit of time wiping on her while wearing frost resist. If she wasn't so damn stingy with her trinket drop we'd be able to eliminate virtually all the risk in the fight from her frost breath.

I've had Taunt miss, realize it missed, hit Mocking blow, get that parried, realize it got parried, then hit aoe taunt! as blood beast spawned... and they raped my face... Awesome! glyphing taunt so I don't have to go through this, because it is really the ONLY hard part of the fight as a tank? kind of stupid...

You did a lot of things wrong in this situation. First, you're not hit capped. Second, your expertise is apparently not high enough... this could be debated but in the face of missing a critical mocking blow I think it's safe to say. Third, you apparently were not paying attention to the timers, given the choice of aoe taunting blood beasts onto yourself or letting Saurfang gain a few more blood points waiting on a refresh on your taunt cooldown, you should have opted for the blood points.

Tanking in Wrath is lame, missing a Taunt on Sindragosa makes it lamer.

Cataclysm is in beta, it's not too late to ask blizzard to just have tank classes come with included macros so they can just play themselves.

.....Rage? It's the Theory and Mechanics Discussion forum, were supposed to discuss such things, this is far from a stupid post that only a few people post on and shoot down as an irrelevant issue. And who knows this topic might have helped make Blizzard decide to put Taunt on the Hit table.

To be honest there isn't a lot of discussion going on. People are just saying they don't think misses should be able to happen in one breath and that the game is too boring in the next. Seems contradictory to me, but to each their own.

Skill has nothing to do with a taunt missing on a boss fight that requires a timely tank swap, such as Heroic Sindragosa. No one likes getting a boss to 5%, perfect execution, only to wipe because of something silly like a taunt missing and then secondary taunt missing/getting parried right after, when it was required, there's nothing skillful about it, just flawed design. And who said anything about taking out CC and fear? I think you are missing the point of the topic.

If a missed taunt were merely silly, then it wouldn't be a big deal. Since it is actually a big deal, a missed taunt is a scenario that should be taken seriously and planned for either by proper gearing and glyphing, or some other backup plan. I personally have built my tank in such a way that such a scenario never happens because I have planned ahead. Choosing a gear setup for your character requires time and intelligence, including pieces to increase effectiveness in certain situations is a sign of forethought and wisdom. Missing a taunt in a fight has everything to do skill because if you are 'Jim Anonymous'* using someone elses BiS list and didn't think for yourself about scenarios where a missed taunt is unacceptable then you have no one to blame but yourself.

*Note, I'm not accusing you or anyone else of being this guy, but we all know they exist.

I'm guessing the people who think that Taunt resists are fun never actually did 4 Horsemen when it was difficult progression content.

The general complaint seems to be that tanks don't have enough to do in a fight. Chance to miss a taunt a factor warriors should have to take into account just like any other class has to take into account their chance to miss an attack... or do we really want warriors to always hit, always keep threat, and always successfully taunt with minimal action required by the player?



I'm sure Cataclysm will bring with it a lot of changes, but the chance to miss taunt is just an occupational hazard that each tank must work out for themselves based on personal and guild needs. All the people saying taunts shouldn't be able to miss sounded dangerously close to saying something to the effect of "Tanks shouldn't be able to die". It seems there's a fine line between having the game played for you and having fun.

[Kazeyonoma]

you know... sometimes responding just isn't worth it.

With melee hit table for taunts in Cataclysm, lets just put this thread to rest.

Closed.