Legion tanking - thoughts on direction of tanking

[Creatinebrah]

https://youtu.be/5Q1pnYLVCTE - Makes his main point around 7min

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20420493025

Here's a good post I found on Reddit defending Preacher:

"Tanks will be significantly more reliant on healers in Legion than they are on live. Right now about 50% of the incoming healing on a non-Warrior tank during progression comes from healers.

Still, a lot of healers complain that they aren't healing tanks enough (which I agree with, they aren't). So Blizzard's response is to take power/responsibility away from tanks and put it in the hands of healers. In Legion, healers will do a lot more tank healing than they do now.

I (and many other, much better tanks) disagree with Blizzards solution for this problem. Healers feel like they aren't healing tanks very much because "set-and-forget" spells like druid/monk hots, Earth Shield, Beacon and disc bubbles are too strong and require barely any input from healers. So rather than nerf tanks' self-healing, the much better solution would be toning down those spells.

I wouldn't feel as strongly about this, if tanks could still demonstrate skill by doing DPS, but several past changes (removal of Vengeance, Glyph of Harsh Words/Icy Runes etc.) showed Blizzard is very much against that. In Legion the trend continues and the optimal survivability "rotation" will also be the optimal DPS rotation, further closing the gap between great tanks and good tanks."

Thoughts?

[clevin]

The problem with tanks has always been this... if they do DPS that's competitive to a dedicated DPS toon they bring double value. If they bring so much healing that they need little healing, same. If they don't do competitive DPS and are very reliant on healers, then they're nothing more than a meat shield. If that's all they are then threat needs to be interesting and require skill to maintain. If it doesn't, then tanks are incredibly boring - grab aggro, build a threat lead that even the best geared DPS can't steal, position things correctly and adjust as needed and... keep threat.

If they design tanks in any one of those niches it's bound to piss off some other faction who like the a different style.

[Deleted]

I never liked doing DMG as a tank, I never have felt it was my job. I feel my job is to smooth out the incoming dmg on me and position mobs and bosses in good way for my raid especially melee DPS. So I won't miss the DPS pushing aspect, as warrior tank I felt it was damn boring to begin with. I've been tanking since 2007, so maybe I am stuck in the old ways, but that's how I choose to play and keep laying. I do my damage, but I will never focus too much on the dmg.

Still a shame if it is true that there's little difference between watching a good and a bad tank go about their business.

[Florida Man]

The problem with tanks has always been this... if they do DPS that's competitive to a dedicated DPS toon they bring double value. If they bring so much healing that they need little healing, same. If they don't do competitive DPS and are very reliant on healers, then they're nothing more than a meat shield. If that's all they are then threat needs to be interesting and require skill to maintain. If it doesn't, then tanks are incredibly boring - grab aggro, build a threat lead that even the best geared DPS can't steal, position things correctly and adjust as needed and... keep threat.

If they design tanks in any one of those niches it's bound to piss off some other faction who like the a different style.

Good points. I personally stopped tanking in WoW when threat didn't matter anymore. I found threat management to be a lot of fun.

Oh well.

[Spunt]

Is threat still no longer a thing in Legion?

[Ealyssa]

Is threat still no longer a thing in Legion?

Threat never will be a thing in wow. Never was, never will. And no, "wait 5 sunder" isn't a interesting threat mechanic. Neither is "do 30% dps of a damage dealer but have 800% threat mod".

[Delimit]

If only there had been a thread on this weeks ago...

[CenariusTheForestLord]

If only.
While it was fun in WOD to go into a mythic dungeon and top all available meters:
Damage done, taken, healing done, taken, overhealing done, taken
I think I'd like a playstyle where tanks smooth out damage instead of preventing/reacting to it 100% and where we're doing useful dps in the meantime. We don't need to be selfsufficient in raids. Disc is gone as a tank healer now. I think beacon is here to stay.
The only class I'm worried about is Resto druid. They're already great passive healers for tanks atm (on top of beacon and shields) and they're only getting better at it in Legion. If somehow the tank healing from resto druids goes down (passive healing that is) I can see things ending well in Legion.


I still agree with the reddit user on most points. Passive healing is too strong. But that has a couple of factors.
1. Disc is OP
2. Healers don't care about overhealing because mana doesn't matter.
3. We're overgearing content by 30+ ilvls.

To reitterate, disc is gone as a solid tank healer. One problem solved.
The reason beacon is so strong atm is because paladins just spam flash of light on everything. They can output amazing numbers of HPS which gives us a lot of beacon healing AND overhealing. When mana becomes an issue again (lets hope it will) a lot of GCD's currently used for throughput healing will be used for triage healing Holy Lights etc... Automatically reducing passive beacon healing.
People are looking at healing and tanking like it is currently in HFC. A place that is tuned for players without the ring and with 720 ilvl on mythic. I'm currently getting close to 747 ilvl, with a lovely fully stacked ring. Pls remember the difference between prepatch 6.0 and highmaul. A lot can change without tier sets and OP trinkets.

EDIT: Pls stop acting as if the threat game was fun. It wasn't. It was a silly gimmick to make tanks offensively useful. Instead of the obvious solution by making them offensively useful by doing actual dps...

[Deleted]

My main issue with the huge tank changes is that I can't see it enhancing the healer role that much. In Legion we are a meatshield. That's it. We take consistent damage. There's no burst, nothing. Tanks will just trickle away HP until they hit the threshold were the healers will switch, heal back to full and carry on with what they were doing. ENGAGING!

My main problem with this is that you have to imagine that healing gameplay was seriously lacking in WOD. Lacking enough that you thoroughly destroy another role to make another role slightly better.

I mean who had it worse in terms of gameplay in WoD? Most fights have the exact same tank mechanics in Heroic and Mythic. Heck even normal is the same. Iron Reaver? Same. Killrog? Same. Gorefiend the first wall? SAME. The only fight that is actually different between heroic and mythic is probably Xul, Tyrant and maybe Mannoroth.

So in MoP we deal a lot of damage that "ruined" the DPS gameplay so vengeance got removed. In WoD good tanks could self mitigate and heal, that apparently "ruined" heal gameplay so that got removed. I wouldn't be surprised if after legion they just removed tanks because tanks tanking bosses ruins the gameplay of pets that taunt.

[Spunt]

Yeah, tanks don't need more DPS. That will only make things worse.

[CenariusTheForestLord]

Yeah, tanks don't need more DPS. That will only make things worse.

In what way would tanks doing more damage make things worse?

- - - Updated - - -

My main issue with the huge tank changes is that I can't see it enhancing the healer role that much. In Legion we are a meatshield. That's it. We take consistent damage. There's no burst, nothing. Tanks will just trickle away HP until they hit the threshold were the healers will switch, heal back to full and carry on with what they were doing. ENGAGING!

My main problem with this is that you have to imagine that healing gameplay was seriously lacking in WOD. Lacking enough that you thoroughly destroy another role to make another role slightly better.

I mean who had it worse in terms of gameplay in WoD? Most fights have the exact same tank mechanics in Heroic and Mythic. Heck even normal is the same. Iron Reaver? Same. Killrog? Same. Gorefiend the first wall? SAME. The only fight that is actually different between heroic and mythic is probably Xul, Tyrant and maybe Mannoroth.

So in MoP we deal a lot of damage that "ruined" the DPS gameplay so vengeance got removed. In WoD good tanks could self mitigate and heal, that apparently "ruined" heal gameplay so that got removed. I wouldn't be surprised if after legion they just removed tanks because tanks tanking bosses ruins the gameplay of pets that taunt.

Vengeance was broken because it was abused by most tanks. Tanks wanted to take more damage where possible just to do more dps. More damage taken would increase our vengeance yet again and increase our AM even more. It WAS a broken mechanic. And I'm glad it's gone.

Resolve was an improvement on Vengeance where cheesing it became less relevant. This became stupid later on though because of the cap. It had to be capped to not be cheesable. But the cap made it a static mechanic. If you're taking damage in mythic, your resolve is capped. There's no low resolve, no medium resolve. You always heal for the same amount, the actual heal * resolve cap. The abilities in that way are broken where most of the healing tanks now have LOH instead of useful heals. And they need it because bosses don't hurt for shit until they oneshot you. The game has gotten more bursty because tanks are too strong. That's why resolve is gone. Blizz want us to heal for different amounts when taking different amounts of damage. Which is the current idea of going back to cata Death Strike mechanics. It's a risk, but it's better than resolve.

The only option that remains now is we heal for AP amounts flat. Or the current system. Any fluid system to change our selfsustain will be abused or able to be abused. Neither are things we want for our sustain.

EDIT: You seem to have serious rose tinted glasses about past tanking meta's in WOW. We have been nothing but meat shields for 8 years until the system changed in MOP. MOP was too extreme however and now they're trying to find a balance between Meat Shield and Active dps/tank. Look up some vids from before AM was a thing. Get some perspective.

Just to add. I personally loved vengeance. I'm currently one of the biggest dpswhores on my server with HOTW and dps trinket shenanigans. I do however admit that it was broken, despite the fact it was fun to cheese.

[SirCowdog]

I think the problem does lie with healers, and not with tanking mechanics. Tanks have many things to worry about: Positioning, threat, active mitigation, etc. Healing basically boils down to playing whack-a-mole with life-bars, and maybe the occasional decurse.

I think what WoW needs is to make healers shift more into the realm of dedicated support abilities that are not direct healing. But that'll be hard to do because of the reliance on the holy trinity. I honestly don't know what the details of such a solution would be.

[Deleted]

In what way would tanks doing more damage make things worse?

- - - Updated - - -



Vengeance was broken because it was abused by most tanks. Tanks wanted to take more damage where possible just to do more dps. More damage taken would increase our vengeance yet again and increase our AM even more. It WAS a broken mechanic. And I'm glad it's gone.

Resolve was an improvement on Vengeance where cheesing it became less relevant. This became stupid later on though because of the cap. It had to be capped to not be cheesable. But the cap made it a static mechanic. If you're taking damage in mythic, your resolve is capped. There's no low resolve, no medium resolve. You always heal for the same amount, the actual heal * resolve cap. The abilities in that way are broken where most of the healing tanks now have LOH instead of useful heals. And they need it because bosses don't hurt for shit until they oneshot you. The game has gotten more bursty because tanks are too strong. That's why resolve is gone. Blizz want us to heal for different amounts when taking different amounts of damage. Which is the current idea of going back to cata Death Strike mechanics. It's a risk, but it's better than resolve.

The only option that remains now is we heal for AP amounts flat. Or the current system. Any fluid system to change our selfsustain will be abused or able to be abused. Neither are things we want for our sustain.

EDIT: You seem to have serious rose tinted glasses about past tanking meta's in WOW. We have been nothing but meat shields for 8 years until the system changed in MOP. MOP was too extreme however and now they're trying to find a balance between Meat Shield and Active dps/tank. Look up some vids from before AM was a thing. Get some perspective.

Just to add. I personally loved vengeance. I'm currently one of the biggest dpswhores on my server with HOTW and dps trinket shenanigans. I do however admit that it was broken, despite the fact it was fun to cheese.

Vegnence was broken at the time with what tanks could do with it. However it should have been tweaked and not outright removed.

The reason why the meta once again became bursty is once again blizzard got to bored with balancing bosses. You have to balance each and every boss for each different tank class and then for each tank/healer combo to make sure they can all sustain through the consistent high damage. But yet again they got lazy and decided to just throw in burst mechanics which are far easier to make and balance.

Tanking before we had control over what we did. Now we have no control. I could pull a boss pop and ability or two and go AFK for the rest of the boss fight. That's how little tank gameplay actually matters now. It's like we've gone straight back to vanilla tanking. Except there are no threat mechanics so it's even worse.

[Leadros]

in my opinion, the current tanking in legion seems fine, but i only played DH tank, since he feels very close to WoD prot warrior.

a bad tank shouldnt be able to do dmg and will die a lot.
a good tank will not die alot, and will do medium dmg.
the best tanks however, can do alot of dmg and survive.

thats how it should be, atleast in my opinion, because how else do you reward good gameplay from tanks ? i really cant agree with the point of "having no control" if i take your example of going afk at a boss and having the same impact as not going afk. i can be a tank who does 50k dps or a tank that does 90K dps. And at the same time i have to watch out that i dont get killed or kill my group and max out my survivability.

i mean if you are happy that you can just stand afk and still survive, thats fine and good for you, but that doesnt mean that tanking has no depth attached to it. because its all about pushing the limits while staying alive.

[CenariusTheForestLord]

Vegnence was broken at the time with what tanks could do with it. However it should have been tweaked and not outright removed.

The reason why the meta once again became bursty is once again blizzard got to bored with balancing bosses. You have to balance each and every boss for each different tank class and then for each tank/healer combo to make sure they can all sustain through the consistent high damage. But yet again they got lazy and decided to just throw in burst mechanics which are far easier to make and balance.

Tanking before we had control over what we did. Now we have no control. I could pull a boss pop and ability or two and go AFK for the rest of the boss fight. That's how little tank gameplay actually matters now. It's like we've gone straight back to vanilla tanking. Except there are no threat mechanics so it's even worse.

First of all Vengeance was tweaked. It's called resolve now. And it didn't work. We became too powerful throughout the expansion up to the point where resolve is always capped out. Come up with a vengeance system that works before saying it needed tweaks. Somehow you believe Blizzard doesn't give a shit about how balanced their game is, and that's just not true. They may not always do stuff the correct way, but they try to fix things. Tanks needed to change in Legion, as did Healers. Both contributed to a bursty boss design because we could survive high sustain damage anyways. The only way they could try and kill us was through burst damage. Because we became too powerful. Looking back Highmaul was probably the best raid for tank mechanics, which is horrible. They had to make big changes or we'd be in for HFC 2.0 bosses doing no damage at all for 59s and then burst for 1s. You can argue about the changes all you want, but don't you dare say the current system is the correct way to go.

Secondly you think reducing your damage taken throughout a fight is negligible with the current AM system? ALso tank damage matters now, get over it. You afking for an entire fight isn't a good point to make. Your healers will hate you because you're not mitigating enough damage. Your raid leader will hate you because he just lost dps.

[Raiju]

Secondly you think reducing your damage taken throughout a fight is negligible with the current AM system? ALso tank damage matters now, get over it. You afking for an entire fight isn't a good point to make. Your healers will hate you because you're not mitigating enough damage. Your raid leader will hate you because he just lost dps.

Correct, outside of specific abilities it doesn't really matter. People may care more about tank dps if they could make any major difference - but everytime they can it gets nerfed.

[Deleted]

I think the problem does lie with healers, and not with tanking mechanics. Tanks have many things to worry about: Positioning, threat, active mitigation, etc. Healing basically boils down to playing whack-a-mole with life-bars, and maybe the occasional decurse.

I think what WoW needs is to make healers shift more into the realm of dedicated support abilities that are not direct healing. But that'll be hard to do because of the reliance on the holy trinity. I honestly don't know what the details of such a solution would be.

This would be an interesting turn on healing, but - playing on live servers I already see how many healers don't even dispel, even in cases where it is really important. I fear, many players would not be able to grasp even more support functions.

Also, Disc playstyle goes a bit in this direction (anticipating healing instead of reactive healing), and this only works out if you already know the fight. If you don't know a fight, then you have to react, or blanket the group with all kinds of preparation.

The whole playstyle of WoW does not work in favor of supporters.

[Leadros]

Correct, outside of specific abilities it doesn't really matter. People may care more about tank dps if they could make any major difference - but everytime they can it gets nerfed.

i dunno man, i cant really see a point arguing if you think that you make no difference if you do 10k dps being afk or 50k dps being active. id kick every tank that acts like that in an instant.

[Deleted]

Threat never will be a thing in wow. Never was, never will. And no, "wait 5 sunder" isn't a interesting threat mechanic. Neither is "do 30% dps of a damage dealer but have 800% threat mod".

Speak for yourself.

[Raiju]

i dunno man, i cant really see a point arguing if you think that you make no difference if you do 10k dps being afk or 50k dps being active. id kick every tank that acts like that in an instant.

obviously the point is exaggerated else you would die to mechanics completely afk - but the difference between a tank coasting and a tank dps maxing is pathetically small when compared to dps specs.