Should Taunts Really Miss Bosses?

[Airowird]

First of all they should change the glyph to work for the full 17%, then we can work for making Taunt a ranged ability rather than a spell, assuming that it might take a big patch (read: 4.0 cata pre-patch) to completely overhaul Taunts.
Besides, Warriors don't want spells anyway, they only work if you wear a dress and what tank would run around in a thing like that? .... Oh, sorry Paladins

[Teran]

You aren't forced to use a glyph. If you and your guild feel that missing ~one taunt out of ten is an acceptable risk then don't use the glyph. If you and your guild feel it is unacceptable then use the glyph.

A lot of people seem to think that glyphs are supposed to make our characters stronger by buffing a specific skill. This is the case with many of them however glyphs aren't there just to help us capitalize on the strengths of our class, some glyphs exist to eliminate a weakness. I more or less have to choose between the 8% hit glyph or a bonus to the healing I receive while frenzied regeneration is up. It's an easy choice to take in my case as I have little trouble with survival and believe missing two taunts out of a hundred is much more acceptable in terms of risk than one out of ten.

[Miagorme]

could just gear/gem for a little more hit =p

[Steakdinner]

Just think it's silly that it's based on spell hit, from the warrior perspective. Seeing that all of my damage is physical, I shouldn't be punished for not being at the spell hit cap.

[Amaranthine]

Am I weird to still appreciate that you can even taunt bosses?

Lol i remember those old days when NOTHING was tauntable.

It is a bit silly that the Lich King himself is driven to attack someone because they called his mother ugly

[Satorri]

/wind up to terrible


"Yo Lichy! Yo' mummy's so fat...."

[Quinafoi]

Maybe in Cataclysm they will make it so taunt never misses bosses, by just making all bosses immune to taunt like they used to be. Consider yourselves lucky taunt does work and don't complain about the chance for it to fail when it used to not work at all on many boss encounters.

[Teran]

Lol i remember those old days when NOTHING was tauntable.

It is a bit silly that the Lich King himself is driven to attack someone because they called his mother ugly

I think it's also a but silly that a bear roaring can debuff his hp, a warrior or rogue can damage his indestructible armor, and that a man who is supposed to be dead can still bleed.

Come to think of it, the fact that he doesn't just use that insta raid kill 5 seconds into the fight instead of when his hp pool hits 10% is odd too.

Over simplifying game mechanics and then contrasting that with something that might be more "realistic" is just silly.

I also remember when nothing was tauntable. I also remember that warriors were the only tank fully equipped to actually tank in those conditions, anything else was not optimal or efficient.

I don't think all bosses should be tauntable, but making all bosses untauntable would just be silly. It is a valuable mechanic that adds depth to the game and being forced to choose between two good options is better than not having more good options than you have glyph space for.

[Daavos]

Warriors and Druids do not have a secondary taunt mechanic.

I find mocking blow and CS helpful as secondary taunts.

[Mert]

they only work if you wear a dress and what tank would run around in a thing like that? .... Oh, sorry Paladins

And proud of it! We're protected and stylish. Give me a skirt made of plate mail over horrendous, gothy skull-ridden shoulders any day

[jere]

I find mocking blow and CS helpful as secondary taunts.

Those are not taunts. They are strictly Fixates. Taunts actually change threat table values while fixates do not.

[2ndNin]

I think the answer to this one is a lot more complex and depends on how fights are designed. If threat is still not meant to be an issue, then leaving the bosses tauntable makes sense as it means tank threat imbalances can be ignored largely and you can have hard transitions without requiring an aggro reset. Switching aggro fights without a reset means there must be a mechanic in place to reduce the threat / control threat on targets meaning Blizzard needs to actually balance tank threat. Can you imagine how easy Void Reaver would have been with a threat cap set by a chain icy touching DK?

Tauntable bosses make life easier for Blizzard and tanks. I think this is one of those things where we need better control mechanics in general rather than just taunts, however if a boss shouldn't be tauntable then make it so, otherwise why not just leave it tauntable.

[Loganisis]

I don't understand why people are upset with non-glyphed taunts missing. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that taunt success is a factor in a fight encounter - if, as a tank, you're not spec'd for it, you're letting the raid down. If a taunt misses and it becomes a raid wipe, the tank didn't perform. Thats the type of required attention I enjoy - especially on taunt fights when really the only thing you're doing is making sure you taunt off at the right time. Now having to track taunt misses in a fight with a million other things going on... that's different, but for taunt fights - what else are you doing to keep you entertained?

[2ndNin]

Imagine a fight where mages had to use glyph of slow or there would be a potential wipe. Or Warlocks using unending breath... Its not a good mechanic to have a problem that you cannot work around using normal gear or skills. Taunt yes, requiring 1 glyph to make it work = Instructor Raz all over again,

[Loganisis]

Imagine a fight where mages had to use glyph of slow or there would be a potential wipe. Or Warlocks using unending breath... Its not a good mechanic to have a problem that you cannot work around using normal gear or skills. Taunt yes, requiring 1 glyph to make it work = Instructor Raz all over again,

Except that this is completely different. Every tank has a fixate as far as I'm aware that lasts longer than the taunt CD. And warriors get free taunts (dunno about other classes with vig on the other tank).

And when does missing a taunt lead to a wipe?

Missing on Deathbringer - nope - unless you're right at the margin.
Putrice - maybe
LDW, Festergut - nope. With Fester you may need to taunt at 8 stacks instead of 9 - so there is a strategy built in if you're worried about taunt misses.

Others?

Taunt misses make the fight more challenging, stacking rune power, more stacks, etc, but they don't lead to a wipe. And there's enough fights where taunts are needed that it's a standard mechanic (even on trash pulls when one gets loose).

It's not like there's only a single fight in the game that taunt matters for, it's a standard, basic, encounter tool.

[Nurasha]

I could think of Saurfang hc, where a missing taunt can be fatal.

[Edgewalker]

Missing a taunt is only ever potentially fatal on HM Saurfang or Sindragosa, for every other fight it is completely irrelevant.
Glyph for those fights if you are worried about it... however in months of clearing ICC I have had maybe 3 taunts miss on bosses, and 0 death grips. It's not a big deal, and it will probably get changed.

[gacktt]

Taunts going on the "spell" accuracy portion is ridiculous, a hit capped tank will be 3% below the spell cap. Missing taunts can be a real wiper on H-25 sindra/put/saur, yeah sure mocking blow/tauntshout but still.

[Kahmal]

Those are not taunts. They are strictly Fixates. Taunts actually change threat table values while fixates do not.

Those abilities give you enough time for your taunt to come of of cooldown however thus stalling for time. However the issue still is on a fight like Heroic DBS being late on the taunt can result in him generating more runic power.

[2ndNin]

It is not a separate issue really, our taunts are designed to use a hit table we cannot cap without sacrificing a lot of other stats for. If spell hit was worth half melée hit it would be fine. Instead we have to glyph for an incidental amount of hit, and doing so is outside of our regular roles. Ok a taunt miss is generally not a major issue (and no our fixates generally don't last long enough to get a second taunt in, paladins don't even have a fixate however they have two taunts), however why should it really be an issue at all?

If fights were designed and had a small 3% chance every 20s-3minutes of becoming much harder or even simply annoying because of a minority spec or glyph others would complain as well. Barring specific fights (resistance, ranged tank etc) a standard tank build should not be a liability as making it so makes balancing the encounter and tanks harder.

The game is and should be balanced around cookie cutter specs because requiring minority usage abilities to become pivotal is bad design when they are not common enough. If saurfang or sindragosa regularly used 3+ tanks and taunt order was irrelevant on swap it would be fine to miss because a backup is assumed, in a two tank world that backup doesn't exist so shouldn't be down to randomness.