Is a Ranged tank possible in WoW?

[Alydael]

TOR tried this (before launch), it didn't really work out.

If Blizz can make it happen, I would try it.

I can see positioning playing a much bigger role with this than any of the other tanks, so this could be something new and fun (if done right).

Obviously, since the ranged tank has to stay out of melee range, there has to be some "proxy" in actual range of the boss (like the "shield" someone mentioned). In that case, I fail to see how it is different from a hunter or a loc tanking with their pet.

[Mykk]

There is multiple ways of doing this:

First: Tank creates image of himself to area that "holds" the aggro but tank itself is in range doing threat
Second: Pet class tank. Would similar to first but tanking would be around pet and buffing / healing / mitigating dmg through pet.
Third: Tank that is ismply ranged and does not care if mobs are at melee. But whats the diffrence between melee tank and ranged tank? abilities but thats it lame solution
Fourth: Too sick to think more so ill leave it to you guys

[Flurryfang]

Both of the ideas put forward are all alright ideas, but have several faults in them.

First of all, if you just put down a token for you in melee so you can do dmg at ranged, where do you differ from a normal tank? You can easily just make a tanks abilities 40 yard ranged and have the boss have 40 yeard attack range, but that would not really change the way you tank. It would really bring nothing new to the table other then the tank could stand with ranged instead of with melee.

Another problem is that tanks rely quite alot on having high movement. Taunting a boss to specific location, kiting it around or maybe having to juggle several mobs is something tanks have to do. With a token (shield barrier, pet or wall), that tanks for you, you will completly lose that high movement, since it would be extremly cluncky to move both you and your pet/agro target at the same time. It would also create numerous troubles with tank targeted abilities. What would happend if you pet/agro target got targeted by Odins thunder spear in ToV? Either you could ignore it completly by despawning your pet/agro target or you would have a great advantage by being at long range.

So really, while i think that it could be a fun concept, i don't really think WoW is the game for a ranged tank. Might be fun to have a warlock tank like the old days, when you had fights specificly designed for having a caster tank for a bit, but anything outside of that... I don't think so

[Deleted]

Warlock tanking is one of the things i miss the most in WoW. But i don't see a full time ranged tank it's very hard/impossible to implement given that we already have a lot melee tanks you have to redesign them all.
I don't see ranged Tanking happening ever, the fights that required a Warlock or Mage tank in the past were all based on the magic resistances concept which doesn't exist anymore in modern WoW.

It's sad but it doesn't have a place in this simplified era we're in. Maybe work on another type of mitigation that is not self healing, shields, or elusiveness. Like they did with the Monks stagger mechanic, i'm sure if they brainstorm a little bit they can come up with some good idea.

[Teri]

Another problem is that tanks rely quite alot on having high movement. Taunting a boss to specific location, kiting it around or maybe having to juggle several mobs is something tanks have to do.

Yes moving ranged mobs as a mage or lock tank in the past been a real pain (done both in TBC), mostly because they pretty much all had some form of aoe dmg auras/knockback spells to prevent normal tanks to tank it. Especially if a ranged ability wasnt interruptable you just cannot move it.

[Flurryfang]

Warlock tanking is one of the things i miss the most in WoW. But i don't see a full time ranged tank it's very hard/impossible to implement given that we already have a lot melee tanks you have to redesign them all.
I don't see ranged Tanking happening ever, the fights that required a Warlock or Mage tank in the past were all based on the magic resistances concept which doesn't exist anymore in modern WoW.

It's sad but it doesn't have a place in this simplified era we're in. Maybe work on another type of mitigation that is not self healing, shields, or elusiveness. Like they did with the Monks stagger mechanic, i'm sure if they brainstorm a little bit they can come up with some good idea.

If we also look at the times where mages/warlocks tanked, they tanked in a very simply way. It was really just all about getting hit with spells and not interacting with them. I think the idea would have worked quite different, if these mage bosses actually did tank specific abilities.

I also think it would be quite hard to create a ranged tank, that was not either extremly situational or completly mandatory for all raids.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes moving ranged mobs as a mage or lock tank in the past been a real pain (done both in TBC), mostly because they pretty much all had some form of aoe dmg auras/knockback spells to prevent normal tanks to tank it. Especially if a ranged ability wasnt interruptable you just cannot move it.

It would just really create boring gameplay. Just think if all bosses in the game required the tank to just sit still throughout the fights.

[Allenseiei]

You need bosses that don't melee if you want a ranged tank. So you would need to design boss encounters that actually made sense to bring one. So this would make it a very niche tanking specc.

In SWTOR I raided as a Powertech for the first months untill we cleared nightmare. You are a MELEE tank but you can still agro from ranged. The high threat skills were mostly melee though. The rest were just to generate some threat from ranged while you were moving.
The bosses there were half ranged half melee. The only difference is that you just get hit from a far too while you were running around. Honestly, it felt bland and you couldn't really position ranged units so it was kinda a pain too.

WoW recieved a process of homogenenization so that most classes could do anything. Anything like locks and mages tanking ranged stationary targets in TBC is long gone. Why were they used like that?

1. Resistance Gear -> You needed to wear on some of the fights resistance gear, but this gear had no DEFENSIVE stats for melee tanks, so they couldn't tank anything other than that specific mob. To counter this, you would equip a lock with resistance gear and the melee tanks could tank everything else and the lock still did more damage that the resistance geared tank would've done.
2. Unfriendly Melee Tanking mechanics -> Examples are in gruul's lair, Kael'thas fight and BT council fight. You just couldn't have a melee in range, or else your raid would wipe. However this doesn't really matter. Even if some bosses are melee unfriendly for tanks, you can generate so much threat you can ignore the boss after a few sec on him most of the fight unless it's being focused. Before, you needed constant agro generation on that target.

[XDurionX]

So a static, umm "thing" should handle boss mechanics? So actual boss mechanics have to be dumbed down? No, thanks. If Movement was so easy that a pet or even a static whatever could handle it, i wouldn't want to play tank anymore. I can't imagine a ranged tank not breaking mechanics for the tanks we currently have. And "ranged tanks" in the pasts were only an absolute miniscule role in a fight were positioning didn't matter at all.

[fathom81]

OP is pretty much describing overwatch's tanks Zarya and Winston mixed together...
Ranged tank would just be equal to the ones u have now, with no melee skills, because movable bosses would always run into melee range.

[mysticx]

I don't think a ranged tank would work that well in WoW, just for one simple fact: bosses (almost) always melee the tank, so you're never "ranged tanking" for long.

[Averrix]

The only way this could work and would make any kind of sense, it would pretty much negate any melee DPS is the boss would have to be in lava or something where it just doesn't move. I don't just don't see how a ranged tank would make any kind of sense. It would be too much work to create when you can just have a warrior or paladin or other tank just tank it as normal.

I could just see the issues with that too. "Oh damn, sorry guys I lagged out, couldn't get that shield generator back up" Where as a melee tank, you can DC or lag and still take his from the boss.

[Logwyn]

Lul? Are you Dutch?

OT: Nah. Tanking with a pet is horrible (been there, done that) and only doable on content you outlevel or outgear (or the healer does). Positioning is a bitch and having to move out of stuff yourself ánd get your pet to move the boss to the correct location/orientation is quite daunting.

In the end, everything would be the same (pet or shield or whatever at the boss, transferring the tank's threat, health, etc) except the tank is getting nuts trying to dodge ranged mechanics while keeping up that pet or shield.

Give me a physical ranged dps/healer instead, please

My prot body guard that I run around with on my pally does a pretty good job of moving out of fire and effects. Sometimes much better than I do.... But then again it'd turn into why am I bring another tank when the npc pet does it better.

[Donald Hellscream]

It wouldn't be any different than other tanks though as it would need a proxy within melee range of the boss for the boss to actual stay at range from the tank.

Given that most bosses have melee swings bar a few bosses that exclusively cast spells It would be impossible to keep a boss at ranged without something in melee range besides the poor sods relying on you taking the hits.

[Lochton]

It is doable, though you have to realize, that you'll be depending on a second type of tool. I.e, minion/pet/companion/champion. As many mobs would just run up to you, defeating the purpose of ranged.

[tikcol]

So in another thread the topic of ranged tanking came up, and a few posters came up with some ideas for ranged tanking.

Here's an idea from @Teriz





Here's an older yet similar idea from @hrugner



And of course we have the good ol' standby from SWOTR which is pretty much melee tanking at 10 yards.

So the two questions are:

1.Do you think Ranged tanking could work in WoW?
2. If Blizzard could pull it off, would YOU play a ranged tanking spec?

A Tinker, yes.

[Fal]

Heres my take on how you could implement a "ranged" tank in WoW's current form. Have the class throw some sort of Force field out that stays 20 yards in front of them or something at all times. This force-field would act as the tanks active mitigation and the enemies would attack the area of the force-field instead of you which would mitigate damage based on how far away you are standing back from it or something like that, when it breaks they run towards you and you are back to melee tanking until you can bring your force-field back up, and the tanking rotation for this class would be kind of a bounce back and forth between mid range and melee for most of the time. This of course doesn't really solve the issue of making positioning enemies extra hard, what if they decide to turn around and attack the back side of the force-field instead of thefront as intended or whatever, I think it could be fun, but would be more of a pain than really than it would be worth

[beanman12345]

Is it possible? yeah. Is it needed? probably not, it would end up being too niche of a thing. Seems like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

[Sae]

It's certainly possible and would be interesting to see how Blizzard does it, but I feel like we already have enough tank specs. 6 classes can tank, and there's only 2 tank spots in a raid, maybe a 3rd backup on some fights like Cenarius or Elerethe.

[Kithelle]

Really? Just found 6 videos on Youtube that disagree with you, admittedly the most recent one was from two years ago but they still tank in melee.

https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=C...powertech+raid

Having a lot of your abilities being usable at range doesn't necessarily make you a ranged tank.



Well not unless the boss does a crap ton of unhealable damage with melee and HAS to be tanked from range but that's not how Blizzard has designed the game so such a tank would be gimmicky at best.

Not to mention the fact if Blizz made a boos like that you'd have a lot of complaints that it requires the ranged tank.

[schwarzkopf]

HF? HF?! Hellfire, as in the TBC dungeons?

Yes, 3 frost mages stood in a triangle around the boss and 'taunted' the boss toward them. The boss sort of moved in a circle around the middle.