Why blizzard nerfed TANKS AOE damage when its the lazy dps fault

[Mindark]

I agree tanks shouldn't do as much damage as dpsers should. There are many variables for this though, and we have to decide where we're balancing it.

1) Gear. In randoms, tanks and dps can have wildly different gear and specs. An 840 tank with perfect stats and a level 18 artifact vs an 810 dps with terrible stats and a level 3 artifact? Should this tank still be doing 50% of the damage as this dps? Where is the bar we set here?

2) Fight duration. Trash dies quickly. Tanks can often get a few GCDs off more than dps can, just because they set the pace and start fights. Without tanks needing rampup time, this will heavily skew quick fights. At what length of the fight are we saying tank should be x% of dpsers, and at how many adds?

3) Scaling. How much dps will tanks do in ilvl 900 gear vs dps? Will they still be competitive? At what level/ilvl do we need to start seeing tanks doing x% of dps? 110 level with 810 ilvl?

4) SKill. At what percentile of play should tanks be doing x%dps of what percentile dps?

[melodramocracy]

That's a pretty weak argument.

It's not a weak argument at all. There's not a lot of the supposed 'class fantasy' going on if you're worried more about your tanks dps than his ability to survive and control encounters.

Maybe it'd be a good thing if threat went back to being a more significant aspect of an encounter.

[cFortyfive]

3) Scaling. How much dps will tanks do in ilvl 900 gear vs dps? Will they still be competitive? ?

that one at the very least is pretty much irrelevant as tuning obviously always has to be an ongoing process. The gear one is also quite unreasonable you obviously have to take a somewhat similar setup for comparison.

[davesurfer]

Do we know what spells are being nerfed yet? As a Blood DK I am ok with BB and BP being nerfed, even though we were just nerfed. But We rely on DPS abilities as our damage mitigation (self heal). DKs are the only tank without a baseline DR ability

[Reyzzz]

or a Feral... or Shadowpriest... or probably a number of other classes which have high ramp up time and low DPS on trash.

Elemental, arcane, all warlocks, the list goes on...

[Mindark]

that one at the very least is pretty much irrelevant as tuning obviously always has to be an ongoing process. The gear one is also quite unreasonable you obviously have to take a somewhat similar setup for comparison.

Tuning is happening now, so this is very relevant. What is this tuning based around?

Obviously we have to take a somewhat similar setup for comparison. A tank building for (survival/dps) in ___ilvl gear with ___% optimized stats playing at a ___percentile should be at ___% of a dps in ___ilvl gear with ___% optimized stats playing at a ___percentile vs ___adds for ___seconds.

Right now, all of those variables swing wildly. If that could be known, then we can look into tuning. Until then, it seems knee jerk to make these changes across the board. This doesn't even consider legendaries, enchants, or tertiary stats.

[Snuffleupagus]

You are aware it's a computer game and not real life right?

You are aware the immersion is a very real aspect of media consumption, right? Perhaps you could go ahead and create World of Excel and you'd be very happy there?

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sorry I am more concerned about balance and gameplay than your roleplayer feelings and ego. Not sure what you are referring to with the latter part I don't see anything substantial I might have left out. hell I am not even sure why I bother answering your roleplayer bs.

Still dodging I see.

Perhaps if you'd finally check that ego at the door, you'd get it. Friend.

[cFortyfive]

Tuning is happening now, so this is very relevant. .

scaling is long term irrelevant because every new tier will bring around changes that counteract too bad or too good scaling. personally obviously I am all for individual changes but I did prefer doing something over nothing at this point.

Still dodging I see.

sure sure buddy I hope you didn't burn yourself too much on those fireballs flying over your head.

[GameFX]

Too many antiquated & out-dated mentalities in this thread...This isn't 2004 where a tank was simply a meat shield and got beat in the face for hours on end. If you want your tank to simply do no damage and push 2 buttons for hours on end managing the so called 'threat' from back in the day, go play on the Nostalrius server or go back and play Everquest. You can really tell who played back then and who didn't because 'Threat' was never meaningful in any way and was so stupidly easy to maintain with 1-2 buttons; hence the reason they swapped to Active Mitigation. Tank gameplay in Vanilla, BC and Wrath was lawl worthy at best, and the tank population was in decline. Cata and MoP saw the tanking numbers increase, hmm - I wonder why?

Tanking has evolved and its better for the game - More tanks now in the game and more gameplay for tanks to juggle. Tanks should have to make choices to make their gameplay fun...Am I in danger of dying or taking mass amounts of damage? No - then press more DPS buttons; Yes - then press the needed survival button(s). And that also goes along with positioning correctly, using big defensive cooldowns and managing debuffs etc.

Tank damage is not that high, especially on single target fights. Blizzard stated in their Legion watercooler that tanks should be doing about 70-75% of a pure DPS. And on average that's where they are - If you're a DPS and you're getting beat on single target boss encounters by a tank you need to practice more and learn your class, because you shouldn't be. Most of all tanks abilities are AoE now which is why their AoE is so high. Some DPS specs just aren't good at AoE or Cleave while most tanks are because of their changes in Legion. Moreover tanks are heavy toward the start of an expansion and taper off in the end because all the DPS will scale better than them.

A flat nerf across the board is definitely uncalled for and lazy of the devs. Vengenace DHs and Blood DKs can definitely pump out some pain on AoE but there are other tanks specs that literally put out crap AoE dps. Target the abilities in question and adjust them how about that?? But in typical Blizzard fashion they knee-jerk in reaction to the most vocal players complaining that tanks are beating them in DPS when in reality most of the time its just bad play on their part.

[Mindark]

scaling is long term irrelevant because every new tier will bring around changes that counteract too bad or too good scaling.

The fact that it is constantly tuned makes it very much relevant. If scaling was irrelevant, then they wouldn't have to constantly tune. Because scaling is relevant, there can be a huge discrepancy between the 810s and 850s that we see in heroics today.

[iperson]

The problem is too many people were playing tanks... oh wait...

[cFortyfive]

If scaling was irrelevant, then they wouldn't have to constantly tune.

In previous addons warriors and firemages were often named as scaling particularly well but for instance when fire scaling became an issue it was simply nerfed like after tot so I am not exactly concerned with how classes are going to be performing once they are having bis. Obviously it's way more balancing work to do now simply because there are way more moving parts involved than ever before.
That said I didn't experience any specific issue in scaling yet with the specs I am playing.

[Snuffleupagus]

sure sure buddy I hope you didn't burn yourself too much on those fireballs flying over your head.

So basically, your approach is to try and paint me as a roleplayer to try to personally discredit me?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Apparently, understanding that suspension of disbelief has limits and knowing that video games (and most forms of media entertainment) rely on drawing you into a world makes me a roleplayer.

I expected better of you, friend. Your only real argument is that you don't like that tanks can do solo content easier than you in a multiplayer game. Unless tanks are soloing raids and dungeons, you just seem to be salty that someone can do something you can't. That blow to your ego seems to be devastating, judging by your responses and selective editing.

Try letting go of that ego.

[Mindark]

In previous addons warriors and firemages were often named as scaling particularly well but for instance when fire scaling became an issue it was simply nerfed like after tot so I am not exactly concerned with how classes are going to be performing once they are having bis. Obviously it's way more balancing work to do now simply because there are way more moving parts involved than ever before.
That said I didn't experience any specific issue in scaling yet with the specs I am playing.

ilvl for ilvl, do you think tanks' damage scales equally, more than, or less than dps as they move from 810 to 850?

[Tharkkun]

So I say mean things and hit you gently while the mage flings fireballs at your head and you'll attack me for 10 minutes.

Seems legit.

Please. We have demon hunters, flying machines, fireballs, magical totems, dragons and harpies and you're questioning why the taunt skill from a tank is unrealistic? The reason tanks can taunt effectively is because the blue candle is in their pocket.

[cFortyfive]

So basically, your approach is to try and paint me as a roleplayer to try to personally discredit me?

Not much painting to do when it's the whole argument.

ilvl for ilvl, do you think tanks' damage scales equally, more than, or less than dps as they move from 810 to 850?

I admittedly don't know and I don't think it matters but feel free to provide me with an example on why it's a problem already. For current content as in up to 850 tanks looked certainly not bad from my anecdotal experience. Whether or not it stays that way remains to be seen but I am not seeing a huge issue yet.

[Snuffleupagus]

Please. We have demon hunters, flying machines, fireballs, magical totems, dragons and harpies and you're questioning why the taunt skill from a tank is unrealistic? The reason tanks can taunt effectively is because the blue candle is in their pocket.

Game of Thrones has undead, dragons, resurrection, and dreamseeing. Yet people praise it as one of the most realistic fantasy stories around (questionable, but you get my point).

People are very good at suspending disbelief over things like that, but if you think about character motivations and actions and find them unrelatable, the immersion tends to fall apart. And most of the most successful entertainment is the most immersive. Actually, poor character writing is largely why the Star Wars prequels were so unpopular. A lot of flash and pomp, but very questionable character decisions.

The large world of WoW is no longer the gimmick it used to be. They need to step up the way we immerse ourselves in the game unless we are actually aiming for World of Spreadsheets.

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Not much painting to do when it's the whole argument.

And once again you refuse to address a response as a whole, but would rather trim it back to a bite sized piece you can pretend to answer.

I don't need to be a roleplayer to know that game immersion is an important part of retaining an audience.

Seriously, friend, drop the ego.

[Mindark]

Not much painting to do when it's the whole argument.

I admittedly don't know and I don't think it matters but feel free to provide me with an example on why it's a problem already. For current content as in up to 850 tanks looked certainly not bad from my anecdotal experience. Whether or not it stays that way remains to be seen but I am not seeing a huge issue yet.

I'm not saying that the scaling between the two is a problem. I think that DPS's damage scales more than tanks' does as ilvl increases. Because of these scaling differences, I think it's very relevant to consider when saying a nerf is needed. When one says that tanks do as much damage as dps does, it's important to know where they're making that comparison. At 810, a tank's damage will likely be closer or more than a dps's damage. Moreso in AoE environments. At 850, however, you'll see the gap begin to widen. At 810, a tanks' ST damage may be 80% of a pure dps. At 850, it may be half.

That said, a nerf may not be necessary at all once DPS closes the gear gap to tanks and everyone is in 850 gear. Some tanks needed nerfing, others did not. Definitely not a flat 10% across the board.

[cFortyfive]

I'm not saying that the scaling between the two is a problem. I think that DPS's damage scales more than tanks' does as ilvl increases. Because of these scaling differences, I think it's very relevant to consider when saying a nerf is needed. When one says that tanks do as much damage as dps does, it's important to know where they're making that comparison. At 810, a tank's damage will likely be closer or more than a dps's damage. Moreso in AoE environments. At 850, however, you'll see the gap begin to widen. At 810, a tanks' ST damage may be 80% of a pure dps. At 850, it may be half.dr

That said, a nerf may not be necessary at all once DPS closes the gear gap to tanks and everyone is in 850 gear. Some tanks needed nerfing, others did not. Definitely not a flat 10% across the board.

Maybe. Again from my anecdotal view it's still legitimate at 850 - it's certainly true though that it might be more unfair for some tanks than others.

[Snuffleupagus]

I'm not saying that the scaling between the two is a problem. I think that DPS's damage scales more than tanks' does as ilvl increases. Because of these scaling differences, I think it's very relevant to consider when saying a nerf is needed. When one says that tanks do as much damage as dps does, it's important to know where they're making that comparison. At 810, a tank's damage will likely be closer or more than a dps's damage. Moreso in AoE environments. At 850, however, you'll see the gap begin to widen. At 810, a tanks' ST damage may be 80% of a pure dps. At 850, it may be half.

That said, a nerf may not be necessary at all once DPS closes the gear gap to tanks and everyone is in 850 gear. Some tanks needed nerfing, others did not. Definitely not a flat 10% across the board.

Unsure about DPS, but only the first 34 artifact points will increase damage, with further points only increasing stamina. Our damage output, outside of ilvl (which everyone has), has a fairly early cap. If I recall correctly, DPS will gain flat damage increases for EVERY point invested into their artifact.