Active mitigation is a flop.

[Protoman]

I completely agree. I’d rather some rage was taken off Shield Slam and put onto other attacks. We’ve been far too reliant on Shield Slam in the past, and I don’t think it’s ever turned out well.

Yea thats true. I think rage gen thru shield slam for single target, and tclap for aoe is a good start. I would like to see us generate rage from taking hits, or dodge/parry/block. Even if it's only 1 rage every 5 sec. To me the signature part of rage was that you gained resources from doing damage or taking damage.

Once I got over that five-year warrior pride and tanked some endgame content on a death knight, I realised the only thing that I actually missed about playing a warrior was Charge.

Pretty much everything else was more fun and more pleasurable whilst playing Blood. As things stand, that’ll be my main toon for Mists of Pandaria (I had earlier assumed it’d be druid but, truthfully, BARE looks like it’s being gutted =/) because I’m not going to stay with a tank holding such a weak mastery and still plagued by problems half a decade old.

Haha, yea Charge is my favorite part about Warrior too. When I play other tanks, especially in dungeons, it's also stuns like conc/shockwave, and spell reflect that I miss most.

The issue is the trade off. Is it worth losing my passive stats such as dodge, parry or mastery for higher uptime of Shield Block?

At time of writing, the answer is a resounding no.

Either I’ve not explained this well enough, or there’s a misunderstanding somewhere along the line. The point here is that hit/expertise and mastery work directly against one another and that’s ugly design. If you cap out threat stats and get a higher uptime of Shield Block, you’re effectively working at 100% block – the mastery stat is devalued heavily because you get your coverage elsewhere.

If you stack mastery for the more reliable passive block, hit and expertise are less attractive because Shield Block will provide you with statistically less benefit.

I am not very sure about this, but I don't think we will ever really have enough mastery (+avoidance) to make Shield block feel useless, or have so much uptime on Shield block (thru threat stats) that mastery feels useless. Here is how I see it:
-Threat stats give rage for dps abilities and shield block.
-Shield block mitigates damage and will also guarantee multiple blocks, possibly critical blocks
-Mastery increases block and crit block. Crit's give us enrage which gives more resources to keep shield block up longer.

So if stacking threat stats to shield block often (100%uptime is unlikely imo, not sure tho), mastery will still be somewhat useful for getting more crits. If you stack mastery/avoidance, then even if you shield block less you will crit more often and still enrage to be able to shield block more. Not sure if that makes sense lol.


I agree the system is not very fun or engaging tho, and 60 rage cost on shield block feels like a very artificial way to give us "active defense". It is not what I pictured at all either.

Sincerely, when they first talked about active mitigation, I assumed they would go with the following system: your normal rotation (that you can adjust) provides you an slight mitigation+damage/threat (ie, devastate leaves a very short (3s-4s) buff of +%parry, revenge an absorb shield, shield slam an ensured critical block, etc, balanced enough so it's interesting to react to procs and follow a good rotation). On top of that you have skills on a very short CD that further reduces damage taken, but you can't really spam them, so there is a decision behind them. Ie, demoralizing shout on Xs CD reducing the damage of only the next attack (whether it's magical or not) by x%, a channeled shield block that drains rage but critically blocks (or simply reduce them by %, with an alternative skill for magic damage) every incoming attack (having to pre-emptively pool rage)... Thinks like that.

These are some pretty good ideas, you should post em on Thylacine's thread on wow forums if you haven't already. That is also what I think alot of us pictured with "Active defense". Let your damaging abilities also provide some defense, and reward you for using them a certain way or at the right time. As well as more defensive cd's to manage that don't cost rage.

Shield block was one of the mistakes Blizz made with warr tanking in the past, and now its back as our main ability. There is nothing really that interesting about getting enough rage just to shield block and doing it all over again. I think it's interesting that shield block can "fish for crits" by giving more chance to proc crit blocks, but thats about it. That's basically what it's done in the past....generate more rage, proc revenge, and give some mitigation.

I would have liked to see a reason to pool rage, or something to benefit from having alot of rage stored up. And I would have also liked to build rage w/ abilities to do damage that also defends us, not just defense. I guess similar to how prot pally is.

[Pua]

Yea thats true. I think rage gen thru shield slam for single target, and tclap for aoe is a good start. I would like to see us generate rage from taking hits, or dodge/parry/block. Even if it's only 1 rage every 5 sec. To me the signature part of rage was that you gained resources from doing damage or taking damage.

I wouldn’t support rage from damage in respect to the new model for rage, as that’s what’s caused the snag in the past. I see no reason, however, to not give us more rage for critical strikes, similar to bears.

Incidentally, I actually think a different solution should be found for Thunderclap.

I am not very sure about this, but I don't think we will ever really have enough mastery (+avoidance) to make Shield block feel useless, or have so much uptime on Shield block (thru threat stats) that mastery feels useless. Here is how I see it:
-Threat stats give rage for dps abilities and shield block.
-Shield block mitigates damage and will also guarantee multiple blocks, possibly critical blocks
-Mastery increases block and crit block. Crit's give us enrage which gives more resources to keep shield block up longer.

I don’t necessarily disagree, but my gripe is more that I think we will most definitely be at 100% passive block later in the expansion. This is because Ghostcrawler stated that you’d need mastery trinkets to proc in order to do it, but I think he meant in the first tier.

The system needs to be properly future-proofed.

So if stacking threat stats to shield block often (100%uptime is unlikely imo, not sure tho), mastery will still be somewhat useful for getting more crits. If you stack mastery/avoidance, then even if you shield block less you will crit more often and still enrage to be able to shield block more. Not sure if that makes sense lol.

It makes sense.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop the two from working against each other when there are better options that allow them to work in tandem.

I agree the system is not very fun or engaging tho, and 60 rage cost on shield block feels like a very artificial way to give us "active defense". It is not what I pictured at all either.

That’s what is so frustrating about Ghostcrawler’s response; players are not saying they don’t understand the design intent, they’re saying they don’t like it. There’s a world of difference.

I would have liked to see a reason to pool rage, or something to benefit from having alot of rage stored up. And I would have also liked to build rage w/ abilities to do damage that also defends us, not just defense. I guess similar to how prot pally is.

While I like the way Shield of the Righteous works, I think paladins are going to run into a significant set of problems of their own.

[Banzhe]

Druids are "dead" on beta when it comes to magic based attacks given our new SD giving an added 40% chance to dodge, overall all tank classes is at a good place these days.., granted there's not much mystery to the more or less set dps rotation we have now, but you'd still a significant difference between the average tank and a really good tank when it came to using cd's or using alternative abilities.

Did 3 runs in Jade Temple about 3 weeks ago and stopped after that simply because the new druid tank abilities seem clunky at best and purely designed around trash (however badly designed), was hoping for some changes to druid tanking.., but when the change to SD came making it obvious we're purely avoidance tanks now, that kinda made beta obsolete for me. (Still hoping for more changes)

I read through the OP's post on the official forums, the only conclusion I could come to in the answers is this;

No matter how well formulated posts users throw on the forums, backed by numbers or not.., this current model is more or less what we're ending up with.

[Pua]

I read through the OP's post on the official forums, the only conclusion I could come to in the answers is this;

No matter how well formulated posts users throw on the forums, backed by numbers or not.., this current model is more or less what we're ending up with.

Tragically, I'm now of the same opinion. The fact that Ghostcrawler has clearly read my post, yet left the significant majority of its concerns almost wholly untouched, means they're still immune to legitimate feedback.

If interested, click here for my detailed response to his post. I'm not going to post it here, because this particular discussion has moved beyond it. I will likely ask Albert to republish it to the beta forums, though, in the hope the calamitous crab sees it.

[MrHappy]

i dunno i tried tankin in beta yesterday after reforging to hit and expertise cap 1st and i enjoyed it...threat was not the issue and my "active" mitigation was usefull. Personally i do not care bout maxing my dps with current ilvl so thus i can afford to spend my rage on constant block giving me around 85% uptime on block. (this figure is rough but thew few minutes i spent fighting boss my block expired only when i had to move away)

At later stages of the game you have to play a balancing act of hitting block or hitting HS or w/e. problem with past block mechanic is that lets say i know that i will get two big hits in 30sec. With live mechanic i know that i need two cd's to live that. On beta i can choose to sacrifice my damage to have a longer up-time on mitigation to live both hits with ONE ability allowing my other cd's for the oh $hit moments.

basically there is a scale [Best dps<------------------------------------------------->Best mitigation] and the one thing i LOVE is that it is UP TO THE TANK to choose where to fall in that scale. on trash i can not care about mitigation and rape the crap out of it and on boss i might care a bit or alot depenidng on mechanics and not care about pushing the damage....however i have a choice where if i need to burn the last % i can pop oh$hit cd's and use rage on damage vs mitigation.

TL;DR Its not that active mitigation is a flop it's that tanks have to think more about what to use when and not faceroll buttons ftw =)

[SDMF]

I'd like them to scrap the current beta model and instead, take the warrior T13 2-part bonus (Revenge giving you an absorb equal to 20% of the damage done) one step further. Have every tanking oriented ability provide a small defensive gain. It could be something along the lines of this:

Hitting Revenge could give you a small absorbing shield.
Hitting Shield Slam could reduce the cooldown on Shield Block by 2 seconds.
Hitting Devastate could give you a small stacking HoT with a 9 second duration that you’d need to keep up.

These are just rough ideas but it would be a hell of a lot more fun than the current beta model à la macroing Shield Block to your every ability.

[tristannarutofan]

You brought up some really interesting points, and if Albert gets this onto the feedback forums, hopefully that will help steer the devs into a better system.

Having said that, I think you're confusing being active in a fight with active mitigation. For instance you listed all the abilities you use during a normal boss fight, shout, TC, rend, devastate, etc (not in that particular order), and yes hitting 5 or 6 buttons at a regular interval along with hitting your cd's when you need to does make you an active tank, that doesn't necessarily you're actively mitigating incoming damage.

Since DK's are currently the paragon of active mitigation in the current state of WoW, I'll use them as a comparison. Now this is what I think Blizzard is trying to get at, but again it's my interpretation, and may not be spot on:

Currently DK tanks have a couple abilities and mechanics to help reduce incoming damage and there are some addons out there which a large portion of the DK tanking community use to make this easier. Death Strike which heals you for a portion of the damage you've received, with a minimum of 7% of your health pool. So as most people know, the harder a tank gets hit, the bigger the heal they receive when using DS, with mastery stacking a shield for a percentage of the healing done. There's lots of ways to use DS, ranging from spamming it to try and build up a shield, to using it only when the heal is gonna be big, depending on the playstyle of the individual it'll affect how the player uses DS.

Now this entire mechanic is actively mitigating incoming damage, regardless of how you use DS, you're using a damaging ability to reduce incoming damage, not a cooldown, and I THINK this is the playstyle that Blizzard is trying to achieve with all the tanks. The implementation of it is, as suggested above the most difficult thing about it, and it'll be a difficult mechanic to test, for what may or may not be a plethora of reasons.

Now you mentioned how you now have less buttons to press during a normal encounter, because they've combined some abilities. On my DK tank in general I'm using only 3 or 4 abilites. Outbreak, HS, DS, (pestilence + blood boil for aoe, and IT and PS if outbreak misses), this is neglecting cd's (bone shield, IBF, AMS, etc). I may not have many buttons to hit, and yes, when I overgear content dear god it's boring as hell to be tanking, but from a progression raiding standpoint on an encounter by encounter basis, I'm using trying to time my DS for when I need that heal the most, or during low damage periods where I know a big spike is coming up, I'll be trying to build up my shield.

How Blizzard will incorporate these kinds of mechanics to warriors is beyond me (good thing I'm not the one developing this game), but it seems like that's the general direction that you're being moved to, and not necessarily having all these different buttons to actually press during a fight.

You are pretty close. What they want to stir away from is activating a bunch of buffs and having to mitigate that way. I.E. in "live" you are just hitting shield block and shield wall on cooldown(or for enrageds) keeping 3 buffs up and then basically "dpsing" the boss with heroic strike, shield slam and devistate.

They want it so that the attacks you do generate rage that you use to defend yourself. Basically i guess you'd say you are actively tryin to generate rage, as a side effect your defensive passives are going up (thunderclap, shouts ect) and you are using that rage on Shield block to actively mitigate the dmg

In live when all your defensive buffs are up there is nothing for you to do but dps, what they want is when you dont have a cooldown to press you are making rage to actively block more damage. So whoever makes themselves more rage gets in more shield blocks and thus reduces the dmg they take.

whether or not its working as intended, i dont know (theoretically speaking i dont see how you could generate more rage than any other prot warrior. I suppose it will be a matter of good ones not having their rage generationa nd shield blocks delayed by applying passive buffs. I.E. I took an extra 5 thousand dmg because i hit shield block a second to late because i didnt have rage for it because i failed to get my sunder armors up in time

[Pull My Finger]

I don't know dude.

I have no beta experience yet whatsoever because I didn't bother downloading the client yet. But judging from your TL,DR points: isn't all of that just a matter of adjusting the numbers? You're kind of making it look like the whole concept has fundamental flaws and CAN'T work, but it in the end, you're more or less just concerned that Mastery won't be any good and that your TPS will be weak.

Also, I think perhaps you're confusing things a bit, terminology-wise. When they talk about "active mitigation" they don't mean "we're making you push a whole shitload of buttons now" . It means that you have to make an active choice how you spend your ressource. Stuff costs rage and you have to decide: am I gonna spend it on attacking and generating threat or mitigating damage?

It's a new approach to tanking in WoW and of course it requires tweaking. That's what a beta is for. But personally, I'd say this active mitigation concept is the only thing that could make me tank a dungeon again. It's funny because I recall saying to someone that I'm done with tanking because it's so completely boring. You're just a melee damage dealer who does little damage and just stands there. Tanking feels like dps without being able to pull dps. Tanking today means "stack up on defensive stats and stand there".

You don't actually do anything that feels defensive or "tank". The only real "tank" button you ever push is Taunt, and that isn't even defensive. I've been saying it for quite a while: there has to be some way of actively mitigating or avoiding damage, and by that I don't mean "blow your CDs when they're ready". It's interesting to see that Blizzard kind of realized that themselves. The rest comes down to tweaking.

I also really think that some classes definitely need serious slimming, ability-wise. I hate that fidgety, unround feel some classes/speccs have today. The warrior is one of them. Too many buttons, it feels completely retarded. I very much welcome the removal of abilities in MoP and clearing up some space on the action bar.

[Zoldor]

Give it a little time, active mitigation really didn't start to shine for DK's until late FL and DS. Before that it felt shaky and sketchy and you were subject too some terrible RNG moments. Still I agree hit up the real forums and post up, I think MoP is farther out than we think. I feel like my priest isn't sitting right just yet either. Still active mitigation is something Blizzard didn't get right till late Cata. I know for sure that Gamestop doesn't have it in the comp as releasing until Feb. 2013 and they are normally about 3 to 4 months later than an actual release, meaning Octoberish would be the guess if going by their date. Still post in the official forums so that it gets looked at early in the Beta its why they pass out the Beta accounts.

The more feedback the more you are likely to get some changes made, it took a while before Blood Shield started being amazing for DKs, had to remove it from the attachment to hit. As someone who tanks with an active mitigation tank mostly, I like it a lot and so do my healers I rarely take a huge shot any more if I'm doing my job correctly. It is easy to fail the rotation and leave yourself unable to do anything and that will really separate the good tanks from those who are just relying on gears. I hope they get it right for Warriors and Pallys because I do like the model my DK follows compared to what my pally follows on live now. If you would have asked me during T11 or early T12 I would have said otherwise, there were moments of a miss streak and I turned into a pane of glass and would just get exploded.

TLDR; Definately keep a post going in the BETA forums, help them help you. Also give em some time to get it right and once they do I promise the active mitigation can be amazing once you get the rotation and they tune it right. Here is to hoping though!!

[Pua]

Give it a little time, active mitigation really didn't start to shine for DK's until late FL and DS.

Yes, but they have now gotten it right and they're NOW moving the other tanks away from that model and letting DK's keep it.

Why?