Tanks + Exp + Hit + Ghostcrawler

[Loganisis]

Honestly, I liked the way Exp was treated by the end of it in wrath. You geared so you 'had enough' for hard mode dragon fights. It was part of the hard mode choices made by top tanks. It was pretty meh otherwise, but it was critical for top-end progression tanks.

Towards this, I think a stacking parry-haste mechanic for some bosses might be interesting.

In hard modes, every time a boss parrys an attack, the boss gains a stack of Raging Intentions (made up name). At 5 stacks all Raging Intentions are consumed and the boss recieves a 100% attack speed buff for 15 seconds.

In this way parry-haste-gibbing isn't 'random' random, it's just kinda random. You hit 4 stacks you'd better be ready to use your CDs.

It would also affect the tanks who want the most challenge, hard mode progression tanks, rather than a 'must-have' cap that only serves to limit lower-end tank survability.

It would also make melee positioning that much more critical. A tank would build up stacks fairly slowly, but 2 or 3 melee out of place and some extra parries there.... especially a rogue or cat with very little expertise and quick swing timers, and BOOM, down goes the tank.

[Illidra]

some bosses you HAVE to be in front for some reason.

RNG - this would be so rng that you could end up being raped by sheer bad luck despite being 0.1% off the cap, or someone with 0 hit could never get a parry.

also, i dont even know if its possible to hit the parry cap of expertise in this tier without gemmign full exp, gearing for exp and enchanting for experitse.

[Loganisis]

some bosses you HAVE to be in front for some reason.

RNG - this would be so rng that you could end up being raped by sheer bad luck despite being 0.1% off the cap, or someone with 0 hit could never get a parry.

also, i dont even know if its possible to hit the parry cap of expertise in this tier without gemmign full exp, gearing for exp and enchanting for experitse.

And for bosses where you HAVE to be infront (or at least some portion of the raid) then stacking parry-haste would be turned off.

RNG - no it wouldn't. It would be RNG in how quickly it builds, but the RNG is dependent on the tank's gearing choices. The more emphasis placed on expertise, the slower it would grow.

The final 'stack' would be RNG when it happens, but you would know it's coming, it wouldn't be completely random like it was in WotLK.

The idea isn't that Hard Mode tanks would hit 56 expertise (to knock all 14% of parry off the map), but that they'd have the choice to knock some of it off, reducing the bad moments.

***

I personally don't want to see hit or expertise matter. I think tank gearing is already FAR more complex than DPS/Healer gearing, and far more fight-specific in the swapping of gear. Trying to say that tank gear is 'boring' and should be livened up but that DPS and healer gearing is fine is bassackwards.

But, if they do decide to go down a path, a path where it become more challeneging to the best players without negatively affecting the less proficient is the way to go in my opinion.

[swelt]

Here's another way of looking at it.

I find my warrior more fun to play when my attacks don't regularly miss or are dodged or parried. I get annoyed when the buttons I press do nothing. But the game currently encourages me to eschew hit and expertise, because I don't need them to do my job, and I will do the job of surviving better without them. Ergo, the current game systems *encourage me to annoy myself*. That indicates flawed design.

I will be happy if they do something that either a) makes expertise and hit help me survive a bit better or b) makes hit/expertise less relevant for tanking in general.

[Loganisis]

Here's another way of looking at it.

I find my warrior more fun to play when my attacks don't regularly miss or are dodged or parried. I get annoyed when the buttons I press do nothing. But the game currently encourages me to eschew hit and expertise, because I don't need them to do my job, and I will do the job of surviving better without them. Ergo, the current game systems *encourage me to annoy myself*. That indicates flawed design.

I will be happy if they do something that either a) makes expertise and hit help me survive a bit better or b) makes hit/expertise less relevant for tanking in general.

Swelt, the problem with hitting is a key part of having fun is there is role for that. DPS. Tanking isn't about not missing attacks, you've added that yourself as a requirement for enjoyment when in fact it's not a requirement at all.

I'm not going to say it's unimportant, because it is something that's important to you, but is it any more important than my desire, which is directly contradictory, that when I have to tank, I find them post pleasure by minimizing incoming damage (I liked to become invincible on PP wipes - SB + SW + LS + ER + etc, for 12 seconds). I honestly don't care a bit about missing my attacks (outside of a little extra stress on the pull) as long as I can maintain sufficient threat.

So when looking at, from a design standpoint, there's no design that's going to make both of us happy, because if hit/exp is required but adds less survivablity than dodge/parry/mastery I'm unhappy, whereas the status quo you're unhappy (at least for this small portion of the game).

So given that this idea is devicism among the community, Blizzard has 3 options:

1. Do nothing
2. Change it in a way they think balances gameplay
3. Look at the opinions and try to find a middle ground.

I think the idea of adding in HM mechanics that make hit/exp more important is the best option.

A) The tanks that most want this feature tend towards the HM progression sort.
B) The impact on growing tanks in minimal.
C) It adds complexity to HM fights by adding a semi-random/semi-predicitable damage spike that will put pressure on healers and tanks, and require melee to be very sure of their positioning (and it can be disabled for bosses that require attacking from the front).
D) It will act like a mini-chill of the throne debuff, helping to keep incoming damage down in order to minimize the growth of future ICC-like heal-bomb EHP fights. Either you take more damage from more stacks of parry-haste being activated or your take more damage from reduced avoid/mit.

It's not going to be what any single group wants probably, it's certainly not what I want (I don't want hit/exp to matter), but in terms of a middle ground, it seems like it's a pretty good one.

[swelt]

I didn't say that I hit buttons to have fun, I said that hitting my buttons and them being ineffectual was annoying. The core role of tank is survival and control. Missed/Parried/Dodged attacks work against your ability to control, but since taunts never miss and threat mechanics shifted enough, they are an annoyance, not a dependency. Game systems should not be designed in ways that annoy the player for no reason. Stop thinking like a player.

[Crittable]

So when looking at, from a design standpoint, there's no design that's going to make both of us happy, because if hit/exp is required but adds less survivablity than dodge/parry/mastery I'm unhappy, whereas the status quo you're unhappy (at least for this small portion of the game).

Optional filler talents to do this would satisfy both. One who wants them can get them and gain a little bit of a bonus, the other can talent away from them for a different bonus.

[thecrazyman]

I find it funny that after they removed Defense on the gear now they are talking about another requirement again for tanks. I may be oversimplifying it but didn't they want to make it easier to figure out? Adding another stat for tanking to watch just means more people are turned off against tanking. It would be our actual 4 required stat for us - hit/dodge/parry/mastery what about the healing team then? They have crit/haste/mastery why not have them required to hit their target it too? Overall I just hope they scrap the idea unless they do it mildly so its not hard for new people to figure out.

[Katzazi]

Healers have actually spirit/crit/haste/mastery.
Caster-dps and hunters have hit/crit/haste/mastery (I think they removed spell penetration, or it only works for PVP).
Melee-dps have hit/expertise/crit/haste/mastery.
Plate-tanks have dodge/parry/mastery with hit/expertise more like "fillers" (maybe with the exception of DKs where they can help survivability).
For bears it's ldodge/crit/mastery with hit/expertise as "fillers" and I'm not sure what they do with haste.

So plate tanks are at the low range of interesting ratings without hit and expertise while they would be at the high end when they are added.


I think one of the core issues why they removed defense was that it was such a hard cap. Just slightly below the cap you were a real reliability for your raid. While adding more was not attractive for all tanks. I think it was probably quite hard for Blizz to balance this stat on gear. Warriors were quite happy to get more defense, while it was bad for DKs (and bears did not need it at all). But even DKs needed to get enough defense to get to the cap.

A good idea would be to give every class more or less the same amount of ratings to balance. I don't want to come back to wrath were some classes (healers) only had 3 ratings to balance, while warrior tanks theoretically had to juggle with 7 (defense, parry, dodge, block rating, block value, hit, expertise).

So yes, it would be good to get hit and expertise into the mix for tanks, but I don't think that it's a good idea to give us a very high need on them. But I don't see how it will work to add survivability to them. Either they will be so good, that you actually need to connect every possible hit - than we are back at the hard cap again and it's not interesting anymore. Or they will be just worse than the survival stats we already have. Than it does not change how we treat them. They get last priority when we chose an item and for reforging.

The only way to get us to balance with hit and expertise is, when they do something else important that our outher stats cannot do. Like increasing our threat when it's actually relevant. Only in this case, they will be interesting (and maybe fun) stats.

Btw: There are already encounters where some tanks increase their hit and expertise because of threat. So for them those stats are actually important, interesting and working. From a design point of view the easiest and smothest way to deal with this stats is to get every tank there eventually. It would not confuse "new players" with stats other than the explicite mastery doing quite different things for different classes. And it would make our button-pressiong meaningfull again, over the whole encounter.

Maybe it would be just enough if they would switch on threat decay....

[Loganisis]

Kat, you're stretching. Each class has one set of stats they like.

Fury = Crit > Mastery. Done (hit and expertise are just required minimum, but they do have a DIRECT effect on DPS)

Cats and Rogues don't even care about hit/exp do they?

Pally healers are what, haste and crit?

Resto Druids are Spirit and mastery with haste to a couple of key points?

Every spec has 2 stats basically they want to max. They might have a 3rd stat they want to max

***

When you paint a wide-brush stroke as to what other classes need it does look unbalanced, but when you look at the specifics of each role and what they really want, you'll see tanks are as complex as any other class, moreso than most, if not all.

The only reason Armor doesn't play into tanks is because blizzard removed armor from the equation with crappy amounts of green armor (seriously, 90k armor now to hit 75% DR I think, and the trinkets have less armor on them than all but the earliest raiding WotLK trinkets?)

So if you want to group 5 distinct healer classes together to 'prove' that healers have more stats they care about than tanks, go for it, but it doesn't prove anything.

Every class really boils down to 2 raitings they care about, plus minimum hit/exp levels (for some, but not all), while plate tanks have 3, plus until 4.1 hit does still matter for a 4th to take into account and expertise does still matter for hardmodes too, at least when first entering hard modes.

***

I've purposely ignored str/agi/int/sta because those cancel themselves out. But when you really look it tanks have the following to balance:

Mastery
Dodge
Parry
Theoretically armor, but right now we don't because Blizz has made bonus armor non-existant, and the few trinket with it are very low.
Hit (interrupt duty, so it is spotty)
Exp (if you are infact doing everything right and still need more push on hard-mode enrage timers)

And even stamina to an extent - since there are some fights where stamina becomes more important than a little extra avoidance.

***

What I don't understand is why tanks get singled out as having 'boring' gearing decisions when they have some of the most complex balancings to do to maximize themselves.

There probably is little arguing that outside of maybe one or two specs, that the gearing choices for every other class/spec combination outside of tanks is far less invovled than tanks.

DPS:
Does class need hit, if yes, go to 8% (and not even all melee classes value hit apparently)
Does class need exp, if yes, go to 26 (and not even all melee classes value exp apparenlty)
Stat priority #1
Stat priority #2
<everything else turn into #1 or #2>

Healers
Do you need spirit? (apparnetly H Pallys it isn't all that important)
Can you hit haste benchmarks?
Stat Priority #1
Stat Priority #2

Tanks:
Stat Priority #1
Stat Priority #2
Stat Priority #3
Need Stamina for a fight?
Need Hit for a fight?
Need Exp for a fight?

The only tank that doesn't fall into this category really are bears.

****

I think saying tanks need more rating choices because they have the 'fewest' is disingenous because while they have the 'smallest' group to choose from, they're all important, often require balancing on the micro level, and may even change several times within a raid.

Whereas every other non-tank role really has a couple of benchmarks that are MUST HAVEs and then 2 stats they care about with everything else being inferior.

Adding 'benchmark' stats to tanking is just a hidden attempt to stealth nerf avoidance/mitigation. If that's what Blizzard wants to do, just come out and scale the ratings required. Don't hide behind the lie that tanks don't have enough to gear for. Be upfront about it. In order to maintain the same level of challenge that's in the current tier, ratings ahve to be scaled back. If that's the issue, just be freaking honest about it. </end mini rant>

[swelt]

Part of the point is itemisation. If tanks don't care about anything other than 3 stats, then all the desirable tank gear ends up looking identical: parry+dodge, mastery+dodge, mastery+parry. If your gear doesn't have those as their secondary stats, you take one look at it and think 'threat piece' or just 'bad'. The only items that end up having any kind of interest generated by their itemisation become trinkets. Compare that to a melee DPS class - each tier they are looking to keep their hit/expertise caps, so some pieces which themselves might be sub-optimal become very desirable because they allow them to cap a stat (for reference, rogues generally need to consider both melee and spell hit caps and expertise and get varying benefits out of haste, crit and mastery depending on spec). DPS tier sets can play a big part in this, as set bonuses may or may not be optimal vs offset pieces and may or may not carry hit/expertise. The net result: the gearing metagame for DPS helps distinguish the great from the good.

Part of the point is that the game designers intended/expected for tanks to follow a similar pattern to dps in their overall design of the game, but that in taking steps to eliminate the least desirable bits of 'RNG' from the game (parry haste, taunt fails) they pushed us further in a direction we were already headed.

[Fetzie]

I find it funny that after they removed Defense on the gear now they are talking about another requirement again for tanks. I may be oversimplifying it but didn't they want to make it easier to figure out? Adding another stat for tanking to watch just means more people are turned off against tanking. It would be our actual 4 required stat for us - hit/dodge/parry/mastery what about the healing team then? They have crit/haste/mastery why not have them required to hit their target it too? Overall I just hope they scrap the idea unless they do it mildly so its not hard for new people to figure out.

Holy paladins that require Judgement to not miss get their spirit->spell hit conversion as a middle-deep holy talent, Disc priests that require Smite to always hit have that functionality from a glyph. I could see them possibly going down the same route, maybe a deep prot talent that causes you to gain expertise or hit at a faster rate (maybe so that you are hit-capped at 480 hit rating instead of 960) or simply add in hit chance as part of the prot specialisation (Protection and retribution paladins get 8% and 6% spell hit respectively through their specialisation).

Making us "need" hit and expertise caps simply makes us need 1600 gear stat points for threat. That is as much as I have parry rating in my full 359 gear or half of my total mastery rating. That is a lot of stat points that we currently can invest in defensive stats, that we couldn't use for defense if such a change went through. They either need to make hit/exp/haste/crit blatantly overpowered for tanks, change how the rating scale
for protection specced players or bake in a certain base hit/exp/crit/haste chance to give us a leg-up, right now I would definitely not choose to effectively reduce my parry chance to base % for a minor threat increase.

[Chamenas]

Part of the point is itemisation. If tanks don't care about anything other than 3 stats, then all the desirable tank gear ends up looking identical: parry+dodge, mastery+dodge, mastery+parry. If your gear doesn't have those as their secondary stats, you take one look at it and think 'threat piece' or just 'bad'. The only items that end up having any kind of interest generated by their itemisation become trinkets. Compare that to a melee DPS class - each tier they are looking to keep their hit/expertise caps, so some pieces which themselves might be sub-optimal become very desirable because they allow them to cap a stat (for reference, rogues generally need to consider both melee and spell hit caps and expertise and get varying benefits out of haste, crit and mastery depending on spec). DPS tier sets can play a big part in this, as set bonuses may or may not be optimal vs offset pieces and may or may not carry hit/expertise. The net result: the gearing metagame for DPS helps distinguish the great from the good.

Part of the point is that the game designers intended/expected for tanks to follow a similar pattern to dps in their overall design of the game, but that in taking steps to eliminate the least desirable bits of 'RNG' from the game (parry haste, taunt fails) they pushed us further in a direction we were already headed.

This isn't very different from other classes. Most Holy Pallies see:
Haste + Crit, Crit + Mastery, Mastery

[Katzazi]

Kat, you're stretching. Each class has one set of stats they like.

It's not that simple for everyone. Fury for example is not only crit>mastery as you say. They want hit and expertise even before crit and mastery. And they have to take both stats into the calculation for nearly every item they attain (at least everyone that either has hit/expertise on them or those that replace one with hit/expertise). So they care for both. All the time.

It's the same for all DPS. Hit (and maybe expertise) are not the most attractive stats, but nearly everybody wants to have them and nearly all DPS constantly move stats around to get those two values right before doing anything else with the gear.

And for healers there even is no fix value of spirit to aim for, it's more encounter and group composition dependent than any other stat. Some have fixed haste levels they want to have like it always was with haste or stuff like that. In most cases only one value falls completely way behind the others.

Only tanks at the moment completely neglect two of the five stats they get on gear in general. (Sure with the exception of special hard mode encounters). Sure fury warriors f.e. may neglect haste completely, but at least it's not "all melees don't care about haste ever". Blizz can fix stuff like that by changing something for this spec that makes it more attractive.

It's different with hit and expertise for tanks at the moment. At least as long as encounter design or Vengeance is not changed or something like that.

[Bigbad]

Maybe if hit/expertise had some interaction with vengeance it could also solve some issues vengeance has.

Either a penalty for missing that would increase the value of hit/expertise and devalue the influence of vengeance. Or a bonus to vengeance for hitting mobs which would make it easier to keep up vengeance regardless of the encounter mechanics, shouldn't be that large of bonus since vengeance is powerfull enough already but just enough to give hit/expertise a nice bump in value.

[Loganisis]

It's not that simple for everyone. Fury for example is not only crit>mastery as you say. They want hit and expertise even before crit and mastery. And they have to take both stats into the calculation for nearly every item they attain (at least everyone that either has hit/expertise on them or those that replace one with hit/expertise). So they care for both. All the time.

It's the same for all DPS. Hit (and maybe expertise) are not the most attractive stats, but nearly everybody wants to have them and nearly all DPS constantly move stats around to get those two values right before doing anything else with the gear.

And for healers there even is no fix value of spirit to aim for, it's more encounter and group composition dependent than any other stat. Some have fixed haste levels they want to have like it always was with haste or stuff like that. In most cases only one value falls completely way behind the others.

Only tanks at the moment completely neglect two of the five stats they get on gear in general. (Sure with the exception of special hard mode encounters). Sure fury warriors f.e. may neglect haste completely, but at least it's not "all melees don't care about haste ever". Blizz can fix stuff like that by changing something for this spec that makes it more attractive.

It's different with hit and expertise for tanks at the moment. At least as long as encounter design or Vengeance is not changed or something like that.

You're still arguing too generally.

Typically:

Melee classes grab hit/exp to benchmarks, then ignore it. <--- this is not interesting gearing, it's required gearing. Their stat priorities stay the same. Priority > Priority 2 > everything else.

RDPS > hit to benchmark, then Priority 1 > Priority 2 > everything else.

Healers > Haste and/or spirit to benchmarks (well haste and spirit for most), Priority 1 > Priority 2 > everything else

****

Tanks don't have that benchmark stat, unless you want to count stamina, but they do have 3 priorities (well, plate tanks). And they have to balance those priorities rather than DPS where P1 is always better than P2.

With tank gearing there are actual limits and balancing that needs to be taken into account.

Hit 97.4% dodge/parry/block? Additional mastery is now nearly worthless (I guess it still does give crit block). Dodge and parry need to be balanced, which can be tricky if there's DR invovled.

Maybe in the next tier if all shield tanks can hit 97.4% dodge/parry/block fairly easily it will become an issue as then it's going to be: Mastery to benchmark, then parry/dodge.


****

And personally, I don't have a problem with gearing choices being different between normal modes and hardmodes. Normal mode gearing = easier. Hard mode gearing = more complex. Seems to fix the purpose of the hard modes to me. You have the three stat priorities plus 3 more stats that may impact the ability of the tank to fulfill their role in the fight (sta, hit, exp).

Right now, plate tanks have 3 stat priorities. Blizzard isn't going to stop throwing out mastery/hit or dodge/exp gear. Tanks will avoid it when possible, just like a Fury Warrior will now avoid hit/haste gear when at the hit cap. Crit/Mastery is just better itmized.

Now, there might be a purpose to that hit/haste gear plate gear - I don't know DK or Ret priorities, but for Fury, Hit/Haste is usually going to be garbage. I don't see Blizzard waxing poetic about how to make haste more valuable to Fury since right now it's an ignore stat, or how to make hit/exp more exciting for Fury because right now they are benchmark and forget levels.

Gearing tanks is more complex than most/all other specs. Hit/Exp/Sta are already important for hard modes. Doing more, costing tanks surviability when they're still progressing, doesn't seem positive.

Make stats matter in hard modes, but not across the board. You want hit/exp to matter, work on hardmodes. It seems like a win-win scenario for everyone.

[Loganisis]

Maybe if hit/expertise had some interaction with vengeance it could also solve some issues vengeance has.

Either a penalty for missing that would increase the value of hit/expertise and devalue the influence of vengeance. Or a bonus to vengeance for hitting mobs which would make it easier to keep up vengeance regardless of the encounter mechanics, shouldn't be that large of bonus since vengeance is powerfull enough already but just enough to give hit/expertise a nice bump in value.

Not really, at least in my opinon. The problem with Vengence is it simply acts as an artifical throttle that no amount of good play by the tank can overcome (basically they have to either have DPS throttle or get MD/TotT help) and then stacks too high to make maintaining a good rotation important unless there's a huge movement fight where it can become trickier.

Making hit/exp affect vengence isn't going to do much, because it's already so out-of-whack. The penalty would have to be huge to make it impact vengence after the beginning, but if the penalty was huge it would cause even more problems on the pull.

[Bigbad]

Aye I agree that vengeance is so out-of-wack that it would need some big rebalancing if they want to have hit/expertise impact it. But it could use some redesign if you ask me. Seems more interesting then making hit a reliability for shieldblock, missing a shieldblock would just annoy me not fun at all.

[Contravene]

My personal wish is fore more complex gear and one more thing to manage like this parry stacking sounds fun on top of it. It intrigues me because then a team would literally have to work together even on gearing!! But I have a sinking feeling we are closing the door on what a typical person can handle and thinning the available tanks to few. A nice safe polling and reaction from Blizzard would be nice.

Also I have a feeling because I am new this all sounds neat, fun and exciting!! Yes make it more complex!! But how long do I want to work this hard to take down a boss repeatedly. I get that complex can also mean grows old quickly I am already a little bored of 939.. Although I think I am bored because it takes no thinking anymore I just auto pilot it.

[Chamenas]

I actually like the concept of vengeance. While a Tank isn't a DPS class, it doesn't hurt to have them doing a lot of damage. Not only does it make more sense from a threat standpoint, but, in theory, you could design encounters around tanks having comparable DPS to DPS since it would be hard to abuse (as only the active target would be able to get stacks, so it's not like you can go into an encounter with 7 or 19 Tanks).