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

[Deliverer]

I wonder how many of the posters here are actually tanking.
From reading the thread, I've got a weird feeling that most of them want to have tank gameplay destroyed just because they play dps/healers themselves and don't care about tanks. Or maybe don't even have balls to play one (I was legitimely scared of tanking when I started playing in vanilla, so I rolled a rogue).
Also, there's a stupid memo about tanks being immortal. No one is being immortal in current content. Even the best tanks require healing (unless it's some stupid cheesing like 20 seconds kills on Iron Reaver Mythic with 17 arcane mages) in difficult content.
And what's wrong with tank not requiring any healing in content they overgear by miles?
I've been tanking since wrath and it was extremely boring back then (spamming 696 rotation as paladin) and you had almost no control over your health, things got better in Cata, and MoP was a pinnacle of tank gameplay design. Sure, Vengeance was stupid, but everything else about tanking was great. Bad tanks still died on everything. Good tanks were nearly immortal. You could clearly tell the difference between two kinds. And it felt good to be in control. Of both encounters and your own health.
WoD gameplay is still decent, but sometimes you can just spam your rotation like a dps with occasional focus on mitigating hard hits with AM. We still control the encounters and great deal of our own surviveability, but we also require healing. No tank can self-sustain like it was in MoP.
I haven't played alpha myself but from what I've heard from many paladin tanks, devs destroyed the remaining pieces of engaging gameplay we had and basically turned us into glorified meatshields. Yeah, we may still be in control of the encounters but we sure ain't in control of our own health anymore. That's a huge step backwards.
This was one of the main reasons why I wanted to tank. I want to contol the situation, I want to know that my own death was mainly my fault/misplay, and not someone else's. Tank mechanics in Cata/MoP/WoD provided that kind of gameplay, and it felt good. I've never heard any healer complain about being bored and having nothing to heal, so I think that all those "tanks controlling their own hp is not fun fo healer" arguments are pure BS. There's always lots of random damage flying around.

Couldn't agree more with you.. A lot of people here are talking about tanking when they have never been a tank before. Anyone saying a tank is immortal clearly doesn't know what they are talking about because no tank is immortal in proper content.

[Theoris]

That's fine, I didn't want to tank on my paladin in Legion anyway.
....Maybe a little, but still.

[Marrilaife]

In BC? LOL, no. Heroics were fucking hard in TBC, even tanks had to be decent geared. I went in the first one I ever did, after leveling, guild that cleared naxx 40, i couldnt keep the tank up on first trash pack.

If you went with your naxx gear to a heroic just after dinging, then you probably didn't meet the TBC defense cap and had too small health pool.

I think WOTLK was the only expansion where people jumped into progress with old expansion gear. In all other expansions gear gap was simply too big. This seems to be even more the case with legion gear. Also from TBC to MOP an end game bis piece was worth more than it's ilvl in comparison to a levelling green due to sockets. In vanilla, there was no sockets. Now again we have very little except people who farmed their ass off.

There is only as much when skill can compensate for lack of gear. If skill was all and gear was nothing, hardcore players wouldn't do split runs and such to maximize gear.

I've never heard any healer complain about being bored and having nothing to heal,

Never heard that one either, and especially not in random pug dungeons. Healers are more than happy to either start dpsing or afk on follow if no damage floats around.

What makes me more sad is the notion Legion tanks will be proportionally less tanky in comparison to a dps, Blizzard said "we don't need tanks to be 50 times sturdier than a dps".

It's already hard enough in dungeons to employ a rule "you pull it you tank it", dps are pulling ahead of the tank left and right and you can't even "let them die" because they just won't die. Hunter pets taunting and not dying, while dragging mobs away from the place you want to group them. And so on.

And I sincerely hope Legion dungeons won't look like timewalking where if I pick a healer I'm forced to spam heal everyone disregarding mana or overhealing because tank can get easily 2-shot by a couple of trash mobs in utgarde pinnacle timewalk. There is no triage, there is only whack a mole gameplay. I don't have alpha, please tell me "tank will take damage" doesn't equal to this.

[Evolved]

Also, there's a stupid memo about tanks being immortal. No one is being immortal in current content. Even the best tanks require healing (unless it's some stupid cheesing like 20 seconds kills on Iron Reaver Mythic with 17 arcane mages) in difficult content.
And what's wrong with tank not requiring any healing in content they overgear by miles?

I have a feeling they're trolling, or ignorant. No tanks are doing mythic raid bosses with no external healing outside of speed kills.

That is an issue of knowing what was going to happen. Not that what happened was so strong it couldn't be survived. BC heroics weren't half as hard as people like to claim they were, you just had to know a little more about what mobs did or how pats moved.

Yep, as long as you had CC and a decent healer.

Very, very bad. I'm gonna call a spade a spade. If I can praise a lot of other stuff about Legion, I'm gonna equally call out shitty stuff they are doing. Tanking right now is one of the few terrible things about Legion. And it's a big deal.

Agreed.

riddicilous amount of selfsustain =/= unkillable

but nice try to hyperbole to distract from the point

That's what they call irony.

[Zantos]

I am glad I am moving away from tanking. It looks so mind numbingly boring now that I would fall asleep tanking. I would also get ticked a lot because I hate it when I die. I would especially hate it if I could do literally nothing about it but blame the healers.

[MilesMcStyles]

Yea it's gonna suck knowing that it doesn't really matter how I hit my keys, knowing that all actual optimization aspects of tanking are gone, and that after a boss is dead once you will not see a relative increase in your worth again (because you can't get better at not dieing or holding threat once you've reached "did not die in fight" and "threat held throughout"), while DPS see their DPS increased on that fight throughout progressing that tier.

It sucks that guilds are actually gonna have to have people actually take on this mindless, effortless role. Throughout the playerbase of WoW, everyone will forever know that a guild's tanks are the least important and least skilled players on their roster. It really, really sucks

[PrairieChicken]

That is what pruning is all about - reducing the gap between good and bad players. They are doing exactly as they intend to

[Khorm]

That is what pruning is all about - reducing the gap between good and bad players. They are doing exactly as they intend to

This is it. No tank class now has their AM tied to any of their rotational abilities with the exception of DKs.

[Deleted]

So you're saying WoD was a healer problem then. Glad we agree.

Nobody has ever asked for the ability to never die without a healer. Hyperbole does nothing for your argument, try again.

Dude, i just borrowed that hyperbole from other posts here, surely its useless and doesnt make any sense (as i stated above). What you guys all miss is that its all connected within PvE encounter design (it wont affect raids that much because some external cooldowns and communication between tanks will be miles better). Biggest complain is that you are no longer able to carry "looking-for-dungeon" group of randoms as a tank.

Why dont you guys take a step back and actually think about it. Is it really a problem that other 4 people qeued with you have to do something, like heal, CC, dispel or dodge crap? Im more worried about this causing guildies splitting groups for LFD to get that extra buff to clear the dungeon faster (which is terrible design). I have not seen any convincing argument here saying how "-20/30% damage taken for X seconds" activy ability is useless, because its not. Plethora of oh-shit buttons remained until WoD from times of spike damage (criticals, crushing blows, unlucky series of dodges&misses, etc), all of these mechanics are gone. Just ability design remained for some unknown reason.

Tanks are not weak, just lost most of their self-healing, methematically they are still okay. With somewhat okay healer you can still pull whole pack of mobs, pop defensives and clear that trash. Difference in WoD is that you charge in, pop everything (warrior can chain-stun basically every trash-pack in dungeons as well = retarded) and healer is like "okay...lets cast smite or some shit i guess", DPS do damage and ignore everything. Yea, in Legion you might actually say something in /party chat to your warlock to cast AoE stuns as much as he can, or shaman to put down stun totem. Yeah, horrible idea, i hope they nerf everything so this doesnt happen, ever.

[lokatii]

That is what pruning is all about - reducing the gap between good and bad players. They are doing exactly as they intend to

I have a feeling you're right. I mean is this gonna be good for them in the long term monetarily though? I mean it's clear most of their decisions are based on "what will make us the most money." Do they think that reducing the gap between good players and bad will make more people play the game? It's simple psychology to realize that when something is easy or your choices are almost meaningless that people lose interest. What the hell happened to their age old adage of "easy to pick up, hard to master." There is NOTHING hard to master about tanking right now on Alpha. When you press your AM has little to no impact on your survivability. Its whatever I'm just not gonna tank anymore if this shit stays how it is. I know a lot of tanks that feel the same way. No one is gonna play something that isn't rewarding.

[Mitak]

My secret hope is with gear tanking becomes better, as in tanks are able to survive on their own a while. Otherwise tanking right now is pretty horrible. Only DKs feel good, and that is because of their self heal allows them to feel more self sufficient. Change to gorfiends' is still the worst thing ever.

[Charge me Doctor]

Personally I find the de-evolution of tanks and the stripping of active mitigation to be very much a step backward, and only exists to excite the healers gameplay.

I wouldn't call that "de-evolution", more like "de-immortallitization" of tanks, first it was "de-what'smanalol?" of healers, now it's tanks turn to be brought back to the ground

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. I tanked heroic dungeons in BC with an Enhancement Shaman. I can understand how someone who thinks tanking an add is difficult and compelling gameplay would get confused though.

Another example of bc heroics being just poorly balanced, and not at all hard. Huehuehue

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But you made the comparison that because you could overgear a heroic in BC that somehow that made you a tank. I guarantee you that you weren't tanking BC heroics as an enhance shaman in BC heroic gear. Maybe type something a little more comprehensible before hitting submit.

tanking bc heroics in bc heroics gear = overgearing them. It's like tanking mythic HFC in full mythic gear and with topped ring

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I wonder how many of the posters here are actually tanking.

I tank on a warrior and my friend tanks on blood dk. I'm not going to deny that i want blood dk tanking to be nerfed to the ground and be at the same level as enhancement shaman tanking

[Khorm]

tanking bc heroics in bc heroics gear = overgearing them. It's like tanking mythic HFC in full mythic gear and with topped ring

Lol I doubt you even did you lying piece of pus. Raid geared tanks could easily die in a heroic.

[Charge me Doctor]

Lol I doubt you even did you lying piece of pus. Raid geared tanks could easily die in a heroic.

Sure, if they went full "lol i'm raid geared tank why cc"

[Acidz]

What I really dislike is that apparently rage accumulation is going to be largely dependant on damage intake again, so a prot war overgearing content will often find himself rage starved. Such horrible design shouldn't be put back in imo.

[kamuimac]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q1pnYLVCTE

So preach just released a video where he ranks the tanks in legion based on what they currently play like on Legion Alpha. It worries me alittle bit. Some of the specs he rates as incredible boring and really really bad. He mentions how some tanks have very little control over anything and how some of the specs have been reduced to an incredibly boring playstyle. What do you guys think? Is tanking all doom and gloom currently on the beta? Do you agree or disagree with his ranking? For the prot pally in particular, he mentions how if he was asked if it was a good evolution to the class, he'd tell the designer to stop making games. With the removal of holy power, the spec is basically just flat damage spells that mean nothing.

preach is a mythic raider and looks as the game from perspective of one - in this very video he gave a reason why blizzard is unhapy with active mitigation in its currnt form - its simply to good for good players and too hard for casual crowd - in hands of good raider it makes tanks godlike while at the same time weak player will get squished like a bug and wont even know why - legion overall if simplyfying a lot of stuff so its not surprising they simplyfy tanks too.

[Spunt]

I wouldn't call that "de-evolution", more like "de-immortallitization" of tanks, first it was "de-what'smanalol?" of healers, now it's tanks turn to be brought back to the ground

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Another example of bc heroics being just poorly balanced, and not at all hard. Huehuehue

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tanking bc heroics in bc heroics gear = overgearing them. It's like tanking mythic HFC in full mythic gear and with topped ring

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I tank on a warrior and my friend tanks on blood dk. I'm not going to deny that i want blood dk tanking to be nerfed to the ground and be at the same level as enhancement shaman tanking

You don't understand what overgear means. No sense in going further than that.

[kamuimac]

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.

because that model was widely succesfull only among good players - for weaker players it was too hard.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

He makes tanking sound bleak (although he compares it at one point to WoLK, and I enjoyed tanking back then), but at least he seems to enjoy the two specs I planned to tank on: DK & Bear. I will give both a shot, at least. Hopefully some of the problems will get patched, if not fixed before launch.

[Chrno]

Dude, i just borrowed that hyperbole from other posts here, surely its useless and doesnt make any sense (as i stated above). What you guys all miss is that its all connected within PvE encounter design (it wont affect raids that much because some external cooldowns and communication between tanks will be miles better). Biggest complain is that you are no longer able to carry "looking-for-dungeon" group of randoms as a tank.

Why dont you guys take a step back and actually think about it. Is it really a problem that other 4 people qeued with you have to do something, like heal, CC, dispel or dodge crap? Im more worried about this causing guildies splitting groups for LFD to get that extra buff to clear the dungeon faster (which is terrible design). I have not seen any convincing argument here saying how "-20/30% damage taken for X seconds" activy ability is useless, because its not. Plethora of oh-shit buttons remained until WoD from times of spike damage (criticals, crushing blows, unlucky series of dodges&misses, etc), all of these mechanics are gone. Just ability design remained for some unknown reason.

Tanks are not weak, just lost most of their self-healing, methematically they are still okay. With somewhat okay healer you can still pull whole pack of mobs, pop defensives and clear that trash. Difference in WoD is that you charge in, pop everything (warrior can chain-stun basically every trash-pack in dungeons as well = retarded) and healer is like "okay...lets cast smite or some shit i guess", DPS do damage and ignore everything. Yea, in Legion you might actually say something in /party chat to your warlock to cast AoE stuns as much as he can, or shaman to put down stun totem. Yeah, horrible idea, i hope they nerf everything so this doesnt happen, ever.

Bolded part: chain stunning?? for dungeons i just roll with shockwave .... doubt anyone is using warbringer(charge) in dungeons.

Anyway, i honestly don't mind having to rely on healers abit more. I've been playing my warrior more like DPS class in the recent years. Last time i actually felt like i was tanking was prob shieldblock spamming in TBC for those that remember. Now i think of it i remember having a pockethealer (paladin) in ICC.
We havn't really done healing assignments since cataclysm i'd say... we have some good healers in our team and they just basicly all raid heal lol.

Ah well, i am not too bothered either way :P I think i have to play it first to be able to judge. I've enjoyed tanking in every expansion for different reasons .