My idea on how to improve warrior and deathknight tanking

[JudgePayne]

Hi guys, firstly I'm not saying any tanking class is over powered or under powered. The ideas i am proposing are just quality of life issues with what I would like to see as new tier bonuses.

I play a warrior and a death knight so these are the two tanking classes I will be discussing first.

Protection Warriors:
Update Thunder Clap - Thunder Clap leaves an aoe on the ground that slows and damages
all enemies within. (use the same thundercloud model as kazra'jin's roll)( aoe dmg equal to 30% of damage dealt)

Warrior tier:

2 Piece : Your shield slam has a 15% chance to make your next shield block cost no rage.
4 Piece : Your heroic strike apply a bleed equal to 30% of the damage dealt.( Effect stacks 4 times )


Blood Death knights
More Dark sim targets (this is not just a blood issue but an entire issue itself)

2 Piece : When you lose a stack of bone shield you have a 10% chance to make your next icebound fortitude will
cost no resources and become ready to use (if on cool down).

4 Piece : Your death and decay reduces all dmg taken by 40% for yourself
and 20% for all raiders within the death and decay.

What do people think of these idea's.

I'm am trying to make all tanking 2 pieces be defensive based and the 4 piece to be utility or dmg depending on what the class needs.

[Deleted]

That dk 4 piece seems legit

[Tofifi]

Thunder clap works better now imo. It leaves damage - Deeps Wounds and it's not on the ground, it's on the target. I like those set pieces, except that 4 set seems overpowered.. Bloodbath 24/7 wuuu!

[resonance7982]

that 4 piece would be insanely OP, though if they tied it into something like your IBF or your vamp blood, that would be fine.. DKs need some type or raid utility in order for people to want them again

[JudgePayne]

The thunderclap would still apply the dot it already does it would just now apply passive damage while the adds are contained in the thunderclouds, as for the warrior 4 piece the bleed on the heroic strikes would be 30% of the dmg stacking 3 times so the bleed once again would not be over powered but help warriors.

As for the deathknight perhaps lowering the deathknigths dmg reduction to 30% and 20% for the raid might be better as this gives them utility in helping the raid, while also being used as a defensive tanking cooldown.

[Squishei]

I'm usually an advocate of getting some changes to DK and warrior tanks but these changes are drastic ones. Warriors are perfectly fine right now, the only thing they might need is a small damage buff on the upper ends of the vengeance scale. DKs probably need a few changes, mostly being a raid cooldown (that isn't in a personal cooldown talent tree) and the need for external absorbs to count as damage taken. That being said, for the current tier, there isn't a big issue with tanks, but next tier may change this statement.

And I highly highly doubt they will make tier sets include a bonus that benefits the raid again. Why? Because it was so powerful and it forces progression guilds to give tanks tier first considering how powerful raid wide cooldowns are. Instead of giving what a class needs to a tier set, they should fix the class. Ghostcrawler has replied to tweets about blood dk problems, and I'm hoping will be fixed by 5.4. With your way, what happens in the next raid tier? Each class is missing a mechanic again.

[Tokru]

What would the change to thunderclap accomplish? Nothing. Aoe Tanking is already piss easy. The problem lies with the scaling (or not scaling) of our damage with dps stats like monks/paladins/druids.

[Deja Thoris]

4 piece DK bonus is comically OP.

Those 2 classes lack a little raid utility, not survivability.

[Deleted]

As for the deathknight perhaps lowering the deathknigths dmg reduction to 30% and 20% for the raid might be better as this gives them utility in helping the raid, while also being used as a defensive tanking cooldown.

Go read the tooltip for all tank/raid cd's one more time. A 30% dmg reduction to you and 20% to the raid every 30 seconds is utterly insane(excuse me, but it is). thats a powerword barrier every 30 secs (priests cd is 3 min). It's 1.5xdemorilizing shout, twice as often. I'm sorry but just: NOPE!

[Deleted]

4 piece DK bonus is comically OP.

Those 2 classes lack a little raid utility, not survivability.

Warriors dont lack raid utlity, they lack damage and a small (tiny) bit of survivability

[Deleted]

4 Piece : Your heroic strike apply a bleed equal to 30% of the damage dealt.( Effect stacks 4 times )

I fail to see how a tank would benefit from this.

[JudgePayne]

Let me start by saying that these idea's were just designed to stir up discussion about how to aid these two tanking classes.

The warrior dmg scaling issue is an ongoing issue the reason I mentioned the thunderclap change is that it would "improve" warriors aoe dmg and since they have a similar particle effect in the game it could be a nice update or even a glyph.

The tier bonuses for warriors people seem to like but the death-knight 4 piece is a tad over powered ( yes I agree ) but that being said it was just an idea of how to give them a utility cooldown using an ability they already use instead of giving them a new ability.

I had another idea for the 4 piece being "your rune strike has a 15% chance to refresh the cool down on your vampiric blood"

[Deja Thoris]

Warriors dont lack raid utlity, they lack damage and a small (tiny) bit of survivability

Fair enough, I should have said DK's lack raid utility.

[JudgePayne]

I fail to see how a tank would benefit from this.

One of the major feedback points coming from warrior tanks is the lack of dmg they do.
Yes a small bit of survivability is also required but not as much as the additional dmg.
So this 4 piece gives an extra bleed that stacks, it ties it in with an ability already in the rotation,and hopefully it would solve of at least help with this problems.

[Tokru]

One of the major feedback points coming from warrior tanks is the lack of dmg they do.
Yes a small bit of survivability is also required but not as much as the additional dmg.
So this 4 piece gives an extra bleed that stacks, it ties it in with an ability already in the rotation,and hopefully it would solve of at least help with this problems.

An extra bleed that stacks only when you have a proc or are severely gimping your survival. Nobody would take that bonus. You have to give the dot a duration of at least 30 sec to be worthwile.

[JudgePayne]

An extra bleed that stacks only when you have a proc or are severely gimping your survival. Nobody would take that bonus. You have to give the dot a duration of at least 30 sec to be worthwile.

As i mentioned this is just a basic idea, yes perhaps giving the dot a long duration say 30 secs would be better.
But the idea of an additional bleed, what do u think of this

[Nairobi]

You're just mentioning ways to create (stupidly) OP set bonuses that don't fix the class, but function only as a band-aid. DK 2pc that reduces the resource requirements for IBF as Blood? There are none; it only costs RP for DPS DKs. The DnD-barrier is already crazy OP, and then you suggest 15%(!) chance on RS to reset Vamp? You'd have it UP more than it was down...

And then what happens next tier? "Sorry guys, gotta stick with my 522/535 loots for the set bonuses to be functional!".

No, what you need to be discussing is how to change the classes. Let me help you with that.

Classes that are "working": Protpal, BrM, Guardian. What do these have in common? They favor offensive secondary stats (Haste, crit/haste, crit respectively) over the archaic dodge/parry crap. Yes, they also use mastery, but EVERYONE does so I'm ignoring that (and hit/exp, henceforth referred to as accuracy) for this discussion.

You need to make Blood and Protwar synergize with, use, and scale with offensive secondaries, and here is how (so lissen gud).

Prot Pal favors Accuracy caps, haste > mast >> crit. This is our working model for plate tanks; haste reduces CD/GCD of important abilities, giving more uptime on AM and more self-healing and DPS. Prot pals want Haste/Mast plate.

Prot War favors Accuracy, Mastery > crit >> haste. Keep mastery as is (benefitting extra block/crit block), but now allow crit to contribute to crit block as well. Crit and mastery stacking allows for very high passive mitigation via high crit block %. Add in a Prot passive to Sentinel that gives a low %chance on successful melee attack to grant 5/10 rage (which will benefit from 1) being hit/exp capped and 2) haste/lust). AND/OR add a passive that refunds 50% of an abilities rage cost when it critically hits. Ta-da; Prot warriors want Mast/Crit plate.

Blood DK favors Accuracy, Mastery > haste >> crit. This one is so simpo; just upscale the rune regen rate from haste for blood by 100-200% such that haste has a tangible benefit to them. Mastery will still be king for stacking up blood shields, but there would be an (attainable) inflection point where haste will catch mastery for AM uptime. From then it would be a personal choice: fewer but larger DS's or more but smaller ones? Crit continues to be just a DPS increase. DKs now prefer Mast/Haste (or Haste/Mast) plate.

Guess what NONE of those classes want? Dodge or parry. Scrap it. Keep the innate dodge from agi (for leather) and parry from str (plate) since we all know Blizz loves that little bit of RNG, but get rid of it as stats and get rid of it as loot drops. Make all the tanks use, prefer and scale with the "normal" secondaries of haste/mast/crit/accuracy and we can clean up loot tables and make all tanks more even, equal and fun.

Edit: raid CDs were left out.

Prot pal is pretty well off here, with hand spells and Devo
Prot war already very well off with banners, RCry, shat throw, safeguard, etc.
DKs need help. AMZ is a cool idea, but they can't get the scaling right, and given it's position in the tree, its very hard to justify. 2 suggestions on how to fix:
1) Make bloodworms function like Imp Swarm for locks; optional to leave as passive (current) model, or to be castable and controllable for when they explode/heal. The cast would be a 30-60sec CD, with an action button for explode/heal.
2) New CD: Vampiric Aura [Blood only] 3 min CD, 10 sec duration - For 10 seconds, the DK channels the essence of the Dreadlords, causing 50% of his damage as healing to nearby party/raid members. This healing prefers the lowest health targets rather than being split evenly.

[Deleted]

Edit: raid CDs were left out.

Prot pal is pretty well off here, with hand spells and Devo
Prot war already very well off with banners, RCry, shat throw, safeguard, etc.
DKs need help. AMZ is a cool idea, but they can't get the scaling right, and given it's position in the tree, its very hard to justify. 2 suggestions on how to fix:
1) Make bloodworms function like Imp Swarm for locks; optional to leave as passive (current) model, or to be castable and controllable for when they explode/heal. The cast would be a 30-60sec CD, with an action button for explode/heal.
2) New CD: Vampiric Aura [Blood only] 3 min CD, 10 sec duration - For 10 seconds, the DK channels the essence of the Dreadlords, causing 50% of his damage as healing to nearby party/raid members. This healing prefers the lowest health targets rather than being split evenly.

Don't forget lights hammer for paladins
One thing to note with paladins though, is that most of their cds are not prot specific, and on some fights it cap out (like bop, usually having 1 paladin in the raid is enough). And since you almost always have 1 holy paladin that somewhat diminish the effect of them (Which is also why I am baffled about people suggesting running 2 prot paladins is the best tank comp, having 1 prot paladin is strong, having 2, god why?)

And well, also to mention druids with their t&c, stampeding roar also have some use, symbiosis + some other more lacklastur abilities like tranq and combat res but they are very awkward to use.
and monks just being monks, kiting like bawzes and having best raid healing of all tanks.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

"While in defensive stance, your melee swing generates x rage if you have a shield in the off-hand. You generate 2x rage if the melee swing crits".

[Nairobi]

Don't forget lights hammer for paladins
One thing to note with paladins though, is that most of their cds are not prot specific, and on some fights it cap out (like bop, usually having 1 paladin in the raid is enough). And since you almost always have 1 holy paladin that somewhat diminish the effect of them (Which is also why I am baffled about people suggesting running 2 prot paladins is the best tank comp, having 1 prot paladin is strong, having 2, god why?)

And well, also to mention druids with their t&c, stampeding roar also have some use, symbiosis + some other more lacklastur abilities like tranq and combat res but they are very awkward to use.
and monks just being monks, kiting like bawzes and having best raid healing of all tanks.

Bold - totally agree, BUT since everyone and their mother is screaming about "prot pal is OP!" while saying that the cause of said OP'ness is due to clearing debuffs, which is not prot-specific, I didn't want to bring that fight in here. There's a 20+ page thread full of bad/mis-information for those people to go clutter up instead.
Underline - Agree again, 1 is great, 2 is stupid most times. Prot has terrible off-tank DPS/scaling since we rely so heavily on vengeance to function. Outside of fights that have 2 tanks both tanking fulltime, you're far better off with a Monk, Guardian, or even warrior.
Italics - Good points, but I was trying to keep this to plate tanks only. Still, all valid issues; monks are way under the radar, and druids are vastly underappreciated.

"While in defensive stance, your melee swing generates x rage if you have a shield in the off-hand. You generate 2x rage if the melee swing crits".

That's probably better/more fun than a %chance like I had suggested, but it'd have to be a low amount of rage (like, 1-2 per hit, 2-4 per crit) to be balanced most likely. I think I'd personally prefer the "proc" of 10-15 rage on a % chance than a steady low stream of rage....maybe. Still good tho.