Preach Ranks Legion Tanks. (Tanking in Legion is Bad?)

[Deleted]

Looking at it from point of a healer in instances i still think that there are good and bad tanks. Sometimes its just boring as healer and i go to dmg and some tanks eat dmg like there is no tomorrow. And this goes over all classes and dungeons. I cant say much about the rota needed for taking less dmg but some players are doing it wrong.

[Soulfròst]

Blood DK has crazy self-healing in Alpha.

[RoxyBlue]

Tanks need to be fun.

But the idea of tanks not needing healers is just bad design.

Tanks should be about reducing and mitigating damage - not about having so much self healing that you don't need a healer outside of the toughest raids.

While I tend to agree, and as a tank I wouldnt have a problem with this design, other players would. We have made tanking so easy that healers haven't really had to expend much on tanks. Mostly dealing with raid wide aoes and the dps that get caught in bad spots. Going back to a healer dependent tank will be a nightmare, as this playerbase is not used to that and will balk at the thought. All I do is tank I have every class that can tank, and I can see that this will definitely separate good tanks from bad, and even more so good healers from bad. A lot of healers were also carried by tanks that didnt need them so much, when the smoke clears there will be a lot of casualties.

But my personal feelings on it is good for blizz, everyone should have responsibility for their part in the group. But most people by now are trained to easy play, its going to be hard pressed to get them to accept this kind of design.

[Supercool]

While I tend to agree, and as a tank I wouldnt have a problem with this design, other players would. We have made tanking so easy that healers haven't really had to expend much on tanks. Mostly dealing with raid wide aoes and the dps that get caught in bad spots. Going back to a healer dependent tank will be a nightmare, as this playerbase is not used to that and will balk at the thought. All I do is tank I have every class that can tank, and I can see that this will definitely separate good tanks from bad, and even more so good healers from bad. A lot of healers were also carried by tanks that didnt need them so much, when the smoke clears there will be a lot of casualties.

But my personal feelings on it is good for blizz, everyone should have responsibility for their part in the group. But most people by now are trained to easy play, its going to be hard pressed to get them to accept this kind of design.

This change doesn't make tanking any harder. It actually greatly lowers the skill cap of tanking by giving optimal-play tanks not much better results than poor tanks or even an AFK meatshield.

The problem was never that tanking was so easy that tanks could never die. It's that really skilled tanks who could play at a high level could become unkillable. Far less skilled tanks could still struggle.

[Deleted]

Yeah tanking is pretty absurdly unfun on beta right now. It feels like you have absolutely 0 control over your survivability and just exist to hold threat (jokes) and serve as a mana sponge for healers.

I don't know why they chose this model over the wildly successful models of MoP and WoD where tanking was a challenge, and a high skilled tank would be almost unkillable in their own hands.

You just gave an example off why they changed it.

That being said i havent tried or seen any tanking vids from Legion.

Tanks could definately keep their bit more challenging playstyles and still take meaningful damage though

- - - Updated - - -

Game companies try for years during development of a game to find that sweet spot of fun and challenging gameplay mechanics, and Blizzard thinks they can do it between expansions?! Bwahahahahahahaha. Expect failure of epic proportions.

I dont understand why you would think that would be a problem. But i guess you arent here to provide anything constructive

[Manabomb]

Tanks need to be fun.

But the idea of tanks not needing healers is just bad design.

Tanks should be about reducing and mitigating damage - not about having so much self healing that you don't need a healer outside of the toughest raids.

Why not give more damage to the group for healers to handle (Random spike ST abilities, huge AoE nukes, ect) and let tanks continue having fun? I never understood this desire to return to the dark ages of tanking where the only stat was stamina and the only thing that mattered was your ability to hold threat.

Tanking should be more than being a DPS class that can take damage. The abilities should matter and matter a lot when it comes to smoothing out incoming spike damage as that's what is "fun" about being a tank. Damage for healers to heal can come from other sources than just tank busters and mild raid AoE.

[Kryos]

The game is in Alpha - Beta will start soon but it's still ALPHA and your concerns are valid feedback - but not for getting more viewers on Youtube but for Blizzards Developers and as an Alpha Tester you have an Alpha Tester feedback forum and there you put your suggestions and complains about this imbalance or boring way to play and hope that they fix that for the next Alpha or Beta patch.

His main concern is too long cooldowns combined with low passive defense. So they need to lower the cooldowns so you have active ways to lower incoming damage (a problem for bad players making it very difficult to heal them) or increase the passive defense (vanilla style) but that will cause a pretty boring gameplay. I don't think you can solve this with good/hardcore tanks and bad/casual tanks both happy.

[Deleted]

Why not give more damage to the group for healers to handle (Random spike ST abilities, huge AoE nukes, ect) and let tanks continue having fun? I never understood this desire to return to the dark ages of tanking where the only stat was stamina and the only thing that mattered was your ability to hold threat.

Tanking should be more than being a DPS class that can take damage. The abilities should matter and matter a lot when it comes to smoothing out incoming spike damage as that's what is "fun" about being a tank. Damage for healers to heal can come from other sources than just tank busters and mild raid AoE.

By your logic you are falling straight into the tanks are OP category because they can sustein themselves to much after healer or dps deaths along with doing damage. in good gear this is how we end up with Blood DK's soloing current raid content.

Its not really feasable

[Spunt]

Tanks never should have been self sufficient anyways. That's not the point of a tank. If you were expecting to solo bosses, you're clearly wanting broken gameplay. A tank is supposed to keep aggro off healers and DPS, while healers make sure the tanks don't die and dps makes sure the fight is over as quickly as possible.

Suck it up buttercup.

[Deliverer]

I'll bite as I've kept tabs on all tanks minus dk and dh on alpha.

Right now all tanks have very little control over their health going down unless a healer heals them up. It's a very stark difference between the last two expansions and this one. I've tanked through every expansion and this is a return to how it used to feel. If I had to say anything I would say it's a step in the wrong direction. As tanks you want control, that's what we do. Tanks in legion keep their AM up for the best possible times to use it, and use CDs to lengthen their life, and then they will die eventually.

In SoO on my bear and my co-tank blood dk duo'd about the last 5% of our heroic sha of fear kill and it was glorious. I wouldn't count on seeing anything like that next xpac.

Personally right now the most "fun" tank is going to be very subjective. Paladins and Monks have turned into Warriors and Druids. They use charges to keep their AM up, but they don't need to acquire rage to do so, so their rotation is even less impactful. Which to me, is another step backwards.

If I were choosing a tank right now, which I'm not as I've yet to play them all at 110 in mythic dungeons and raids(which is where I'll make my choice), I would go with a Warrior, as they're still a swiss-army tank and possibly have what I consider the best magic AM, in Ignore Pain. The absorb is very valuable to me, moreso than a % heal based on the druid or paladin criteria. But that's just me. Warriors also go into Legion very intact for the most part from where they are on live. If you like your Warrior on live, you'll like him, maybe even moreso in Legion.

After testing Star Augur Etraeus or as they renamed him "Astromancer Etraeus" with a guardian druid and read some of the feedbacks I can say warrior doesn't even stand a chance to druid and pala tank when it comes down to magical damage.
Both druid and pala can mantain they active mitigation that works on magic almost 100% of the time and they have self healing and bear have a huge health bar aswell. Ignore pain drops very fast, costs a lot and rage generation is inconsistent to use it.
I main a prot war on live and been doing so for the past 5 years and the change to rage generation is probably what will make me quit the class, other than it got slowed down because of the internal cd of revenge procs and shield slam being on a 9 sec cd.

[PhilUK]

I've got to agree with preach on this, I've been watching the evolution of the protection warrior and it does gameplay look like a step backwards. With that said though I do like the need for healers mana to mean something again. I think that this is a step forward compared to the gameplay which there is still time to refine it as the rest of the expansion comes together.

Glad preach made this video hopefully the developers can take something from it.

[purebalance]

The game is in Alpha - Beta will start soon but it's still ALPHA and your concerns are valid feedback - but not for getting more viewers on Youtube but for Blizzards Developers and as an Alpha Tester you have an Alpha Tester feedback forum and there you put your suggestions and complains about this imbalance or boring way to play and hope that they fix that for the next Alpha or Beta patch.

His main concern is too long cooldowns combined with low passive defense. So they need to lower the cooldowns so you have active ways to lower incoming damage (a problem for bad players making it very difficult to heal them) or increase the passive defense (vanilla style) but that will cause a pretty boring gameplay. I don't think you can solve this with good/hardcore tanks and bad/casual tanks both happy.

Lol almost nothing mechanically is going to change from here. It's too close to the release. I love how people are still spouting it's the alpha like that ever mattered. Alpha is mostly for bug checking. Their vision of how things will function will only very slightly change over the rest of the time here.

[Tyze]

Well, people did say they wanted vanilla

So you can only play a Protection Warrior?

Wow.. Fun game

[Manabomb]

By your logic you are falling straight into the tanks are OP category because they can sustein themselves to much after healer or dps deaths along with doing damage. in good gear this is how we end up with Blood DK's soloing current raid content.

Its not really feasable

Define current raid content? There has yet to be a solo mythic kill for any of HFC's bosses and considering that's the most difficult form of content and we are 8 months into it, I doubt we will see a mythic HFC solo until the Legion prepatch. Not to mention, just because Dk's have great mitigation control and solo capability does not mean we need to design literally every other tank into the ground and return to an era of tanking where the only thing that matters is the threat you generate and the rotational use of cooldowns. Stripping so much from active mitigation is redundant because you could be facilitating healer gameplay elsewhere instead of stripping tanks of fun, effective gameplay.

And now, before you say, a solo kill on the easiest difficulty of current content with the literal best gear you can get does not justify being designed around. If tanks (notice plural, not just one) were able to solo mythic bosses, THEN it would be a problem.

[SoulSoBreezy]

40m video? Come on.
I feel like I traded some of my self-survivability for utility.
Also, ripping on prot pally tanks after it was already stated prot had buffs incoming already makes this video inaccurate.

[Kryos]

Lol almost nothing mechanically is going to change from here. It's too close to the release. I love how people are still spouting it's the alpha like that ever mattered. Alpha is mostly for bug checking. Their vision of how things will function will only very slightly change over the rest of the time here.

If you reduce the cooldowns on the cds or give a buff you have to keep up with one of the skills the whole gameplay will be different. Two simple changes that cause major changes and YES there will be major changes in the mechanics (not the spells used but what the spells do) as we see with the new reworked tank monk already. No we will not see new spells and completely new talents. But even changing a few numbers on the talents will make the gameplay feel very different and that will happen.

[Raiju]

And this is /thread.

I feel the same way. People have been shouting from the rooftops about a more Vanilla-esque stamp on content. Here it comes.

So we ditched the interesting bit of pre-wrath tanks (threat) and just brought back the simplicity / lack of AM?

I'd say that's pretty much the opposite of what anyone was asking for
@purebalance specs have undergone complete reworks during even the past few weeks on alpha. We had a tank change inside WoD beta iirc universally as well.

[lightofdawn]

Calling it now. Legion will have a lot of content to do BUT it will fail because of gameplay mechanics.

OR blizzard will listen to feedback, as they've been doing for most of the alpha, and changes will be made in the beta stages

[RoxyBlue]

This change doesn't make tanking any harder. It actually greatly lowers the skill cap of tanking by giving optimal-play tanks not much better results than poor tanks or even an AFK meatshield.

The problem was never that tanking was so easy that tanks could never die. It's that really skilled tanks who could play at a high level could become unkillable. Far less skilled tanks could still struggle.

I think the opposite is true, with these changes it sounds like you will have to really understand your AM and cds and time them well, not just keep them up through a fight like now. In legion it sounds like there will be long cds on defense meaning timing will be crucial, it sounds like you wont be able to keep up AM continuously almost like now. When people say tanking is easy its because right now you really dont get trucked except with boss special abilities that you have cds for. In legion it sounds like you will be getting hit a lot harder and AM wont be up all the time to negate those hits, and cds will be long in coming for special abilities plus tanks with self healing made it really easy on the healers. WoD was very easy tanking, legion does in fact sound like a return of the oh shit days. But as I said im fine with that, other people probably wont be so much.

[purebalance]

So we ditched the interesting bit of pre-wrath tanks (threat) and just brought back the simplicity / lack of AM?

I'd say that's pretty much the opposite of what anyone was asking for
@purebalance specs have undergone complete reworks during even the past few weeks on alpha. We had a tank change inside WoD beta iirc universally as well.

Only when something is severely broken in a way they hadn't seen. All the specs function and will most likely carry to live as they are right now, with minor tweaks of course.