Active mitigation is a flop.

[Pua]

The nature of the system also ensures that the effect is either going to be minimal. You simply MUST be able to survive without it due to its nature. That makes the system less about managing your own survival and more about managing your healers mana.

That's one of the things Ghostcrawler spoke of recently, that your mitigation should make a difference to the way you "feel" to a healer. The problem is that it either has to matter to the point where death could ensue (which it doesn't), or be minimal enough to not be too punitive (which it is). It would be far better for this to be continuous rather than every once in a while.

So....right now....the active mitigation system simply seems to be:

1: Cast Sacred Shield once every 30s, or FoL once every 12s. Doable as SotR is off-GCD so you can maintain it.
2: Build 3 HP.
3: Cast SotR to maintain your physical mitigation. Its recently been buffed to make this worthwhile.
4: On the rare occasions you can cast WoG...do so. However, doing so outside of HA will see SotR drop off for a few seconds unless Boundless Conviction is built up enough to allow the use of an occasional 2 pointer.

If parry is worked out normally, a parried SotR will gut paladin block. If it's not, and the block buff happens just by activating the ability, then there's no point to hit or expertise. Ultimately, though, you're pretty much on the right track; with none of the prior problems with Word of Glory being solved (as in, your block buff is up and you don't need a heal so you do... What with your HoPo?).

I don't like the idea of having to use an AoE attack in a single target rotation.
Paladins seem to have no AoE taunt akin to War Banner and no Raid CD akin to Rallying Cry.
The rotation appears to be pretty similar to Catas, with some tools removed. It promises the same overly static feel.
Protadins appear to have lost their mini Shield Wall - Divine Protection. Or rather, had it adjusted.
A limited toolkit and finishing options - a problem shared with other specs.
There are definitely places where mechanics clash - twin SotRs due to Divine Purpose aren't desireable.
The new dual roll system adds a lot of complexity for no gain.
Will Hit/Expertise become too important due to the need to hit the boss? Especially since you'll need to cap for frontal assaults? Have to see how the new system works out like that. Is it 7.5% from bothrear and front?
Is Vengeance simply an excuse to keep tank damage really low?

Again, your understanding is pretty much spot on from what I can tell. Thunderclap is becoming part of my rotation (AoE), wasting the banner on Mocking won't go down well with groups (raid CD), the dual-roll system solves absolutely nothing and hit/expertise are either too important, or not important at all.

As things stand, I can see many of these issues shared, to some degree with warriors.

Overall, I don't think returning to the "spammable short duration buff" was what Blizzard really had in mind when it proposed Active Mitigation. It just seems such a poorly devised mechanic. Blizzard presented a lot of options, but seems to have simply gone for the simple, easy to bring, boring system.

But, as I said...I haven't started testing the tanking yet. I may be wrong.

EJL

Mhm. =/

---------- Post added 2012-04-16 at 04:39 PM ----------

edit: my only tank experience is as a DK and a druid and only in 5mans, but DK is currently as close to active mitigation as we currently have, but since death strike is part of a DK standard rotation its still pretty passive other than the timing which isnt really needed in a 5man.

I don't mean to sound rude or elitist, but that just isn't enough tanking experience to form a coherent opinion. A lot of people think that Death Strike is the sole contributor to DK mitigation, or forget that things like Blade Barrier haven't been passive for the entire expansion. Of course, that's also temporarily ignoring the multitude of cooldowns DK's make use of for mitigation purposes.

[Baladash]

I'm happy to see a well thought out post and feedback for something in beta. Its what beta is for. Though, I am not in it currently, I suspect when I am I will be writing feedback like this. Good read and I hope Blizz listens
/bravo!

[rahdek]

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.

[Talen]

That's one of the things Ghostcrawler spoke of recently, that your mitigation should make a difference to the way you "feel" to a healer.

Nothing wrong with that - in theory. But it means that they are designing a class played by player A so it feels good for player B.

The problem is that it either has to matter to the point where death could ensue (which it doesn't), or be minimal enough to not be too punitive (which it is). It would be far better for this to be continuous rather than every once in a while.

Yes...effectiveness is an issue as well.

If parry is worked out normally, a parried SotR will gut paladin block. If it's not, and the block buff happens just by activating the ability, then there's no point to hit or expertise. Ultimately, though, you're pretty much on the right track; with none of the prior problems with Word of Glory being solved (as in, your block buff is up and you don't need a heal so you do... What with your HoPo?).

Thats partially a problem with a Paladins very limited toolkit. Prots really only got SotR and WoG - not really enough for an interesting choice. As it is, I did assume "no blocked/parried SotRs" and think thats where Hit and Expertise become important for tanking. If you miss then you don't get the buff. As you said, if it ends up that activating SotR activates the buff, then Hit and Expertise become much less meaningful. As for what to do with "excess" HP...there shouldn't be any. You earn 3 HP every 6 second cycle and spend 3 HP on SotR every 6s, with some variation from GC built in. That RNG, combined with misses, is also likely to play havoc with upkeep of the buff as it'll likely mean 100% upkeep is impossible....making it more likely excess HP will be spent on renewing SotR ratehr than saved for WoG. The choice between keeping 2HP banked for WoG or using them to compensate for a miss/parry/dodge or simple bad luck with GC procs isn't really appealing. If SotR is to be meaningful, then that choice gets removed.

I want to try the system...unfortunately, getting onto the Beta servers recently has been painful.

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.

Maybe so, but the trouble is...with DS, there is a degree of thinking behind it. A degree of strategy. Wil SotR.....that isn't the case. You end up with what is an essentially very static rotation which goes....AS>>>CS>>>J>>>>SotR and repeat. GC procs and possible SH add some variety but the system is essentially mindless. Assuming Hit/Exp are to be important, a miss or parry affecting survival will hugely mess things up as well as you will be without a hefty slice of mitigation until HP is built up again. Further, GC/parries/etc ensures that the buffs can't be kept up 100% of the time...which in turn hugely impacts the desireability (I think) of using other tools such as WoG.

Is this a good system?

EJL

[rahdek]

Maybe so, but the trouble is...with DS, there is a degree of thinking behind it. A degree of strategy. Wil SotR.....that isn't the case. You end up with what is an essentially very static rotation which goes....AS>>>CS>>>J>>>>SotR and repeat. GC procs and possible SH add some variety but the system is essentially mindless. Assuming Hit/Exp are to be important, a miss or parry affecting survival will hugely mess things up as well as you will be without a hefty slice of mitigation until HP is built up again. Further, GC/parries/etc ensures that the buffs can't be kept up 100% of the time...which in turn hugely impacts the desireability (I think) of using other tools such as WoG.

Is this a good system?

Do I think it's a good system? It has the potential to be. One potential fix for what you're highlighting with a SotR missing, or any other 'active mitigation' ability, is making it so it can't be parried, since expertise soft cap usually covers dodge. The heal mechanic of DS can't miss, which albeit itself is broken, and could do with some tweaking in itself, which may or may not come with tanks choosing threat stats on their gear again.

[Talen]

Do I think it's a good system? It has the potential to be. One potential fix for what you're highlighting with a SotR missing, or any other 'active mitigation' ability, is making it so it can't be parried, since expertise soft cap usually covers dodge.

You'd be happy with a mindless set static rotation with no thought or decision making? You just need to press SotR every time you have 3 HP and you are set. And if SotR can't "miss", what about CS? A missed CS is a lost HP point which delays when you can use SotR. Reserving HP for that possibility means you can't save it for use on WoG.

Active mitigation in this case is simply turning out to be an excuse to press buttons mindlessly - the return of the "pressing a button simply to maintain a shortlived buff" that Blizzard decided wasn't fun. One can argue that tanks like predictability and shouldn't worry too much about their rotation, threat and the like....but at the same time, one of the issues Catas Protadins faced was an overly static rotation.

I won't know for sure until I get to to try it which is why these are just concerns right now.

EJL

[Deleted]

*Mod snip*

Post this on the WoW Beta Forum if you haven't already, very well written.

[Bombkirby]

I don't mean to sound rude or elitist, but that just isn't enough tanking experience to form a coherent opinion. A lot of people think that Death Strike is the sole contributor to DK mitigation, or forget that things like Blade Barrier haven't been passive for the entire expansion. Of course, that's also temporarily ignoring the multitude of cooldowns DK's make use of for mitigation purposes.

Sometimes the best feedback can come from the people with only a handful of experience. They aren't as bothered by changes can adapt to something like this a lot easier than some one who has adjusted to something for years. Just food for thought.

[Protoman]

The top and bottom of this is that Protection warrior “active mitigation” has been whittled down to Shield Block (or Shield Barrier, if there’s magic flying around). Worse than that, we’ve lost things like the Shield Slam dispel and Demoralizing Shout – its effect was put onto Thunderclap.

To compound the problem, Shield Block now effectively works the way it did during Wrath of the Lich King, blocking everything for a period of six seconds at a ludicrous cost of 60 rage. And while that sounds reasonable enough considering there’s no actual cooldown on it, it simply means we’re no more active than we were before – in fact, we’re less active thanks to the loss of Demoralizing Shout. Another point worth mentioning is that we still don’t know exactly how this will work with the new combat table system for block. For now, I’d assume that the first roll will be made against the avoidance table and then the second will be made against the block table at 100% coverage before the third roll for a critical block.

In other words, the value of our mastery (covered in another post) is taking a hammering and so is our active mitigation because avoidance will still be rolled first. It’s perfectly conceivable, especially in good gear, that Shield Block will do absolutely nothing for a cost of 60 rage because you avoid all attacks while it’s up. If Shield Block is rolled first, then using it is probably WORSE than not using it because avoiding an attack is still 70/40% better than blocking it.

The other problem with this is that Shield Block is so poor, at such a high cost, as to keep warrior threat stats in the gutter. Rage is generated via white swings and Shield Slam, meaning that either missing will have an impact on how quickly you can get Shield Block up. The problem is that the acceptable target of 8% hit and 26 expertise will come at far too high a cost in avoidance stats for it to be even remotely attractive. Personally, I’d rather run the risk of getting Shield Block up a bit later than reforge away piles of avoidance to ensure I don’t miss.

Oh, and 26 expertise isn’t enough to stop your Shield Slam being parried.

TL, DR?

Mastery is too weak thanks to the secondary combat roll for block, while Shield Block is nowhere near strong enough to consider ditching avoidance on your gear to increase its uptime. Now I can’t really comment on the other tanks because I’ve not tested them, but this is essentially going to cause warriors to reforge their mastery, hit and expertise into either parry or dodge depending on what’s already on the gear or diminishing returns. This has three particularly nasty side effects:

1) Warriors will end up as “avoidance” tanks, and it’s well established that avoidance tanks lead to spiky damage – spiky damage is what kills tanks because healers hate it.

2) The lack of hit and expertise will likely cause warriors to perform below expectations in raw damage output, once again keeping them the poorest choice for both threat and damage.

3) Mastery and threat stats now work against each other. High Shield Block uptime reduces the need for passive block, while high mastery reduces the need for Shield Block to be up.

I want to point out that while you have some good points, you have written way too much "fluff" and it will get drowned out in the wall of text. That post on the official forums is way too long and I would suggest you condense it. The stuff I quoted is prob stuff you should keep, the rest you could prob get rid of. Also, I would remove "the power of bad design" as well as not making your whole post in Bold, you should just have the TLDR in bold. You also did not offer any suggestions or ways to fix the problem, so it just comes off as complaining.

Now, few general comments I want to make:

-@Shield Slam. I also think removing the dispel off Shield Slam was pretty lame and should be put back. It was a signature of the ability and made it different from other "tank finishers" or shield attacks. Glyphing to get back a baseline effect is dumb and something I have seen Blizz trying to do too much of with the new MoP glyphs.

-@Demo Shout. I don't see why you are complaining about the loss of Demo, now we just have to use Tclap instead of both demo and tclap. It may have been something to manage, but it was not very interesting. Bout the only good thing it did was if talented for 0 rage you could spam it and pull easier in dungeons lol.

-@Thunderclap. IMO this should either cost 0 rage, or even generate like 5-10 rage. It would be like HotR for pallys, with our aoe generating our resource.

-@Hit/Expertise. So melee will need like 8% Hit, and "8%" Expertise to cap dodge, and tanks need an extra 8% Expertise to cap parry right? IMO, they should give all tanks 8% Expertise passive, so the automatically are capped on dodge. Then they would only have to gear for as much hit/expertise as melee do. It would also mean that while hit is still really important to cap, expertise could be forged out for other stats, so even if you only end up with like 4% Expertise after reforging.....thats going towards parry since you already have dodge capped.


Now to comment on your final three points:

1. Warr's will not become avoidance tanks. We don't have any extra scaling for dodge/parry, and avoidance stats in general won't be that available for it to even be possible, or happen that often to be reliable. And damage won't be spiky either because of block, regardless of how much we get thru str or mastery, shield block will make sure of that.

2. Hit/expertise are important, every tank goes for the caps, atleast hit/dodge (parry might not always be feasible right away). Every tank will have to cap for this, not just warriors. And every tank will give up something to do it. So with these caps, it should ensure atleast some steady rage gen and damage.

3. This last point seems to contradict everything you said. You seem to be assuming high avoidance, high hit/exp, high rage regen, and high block/mastery. Passive block is always good, for a boss or mobs, if you don't avoid the attack you can block it and mastery will help buff that to possibly crit. Assuming you cap "threat stats', you will have solid damage and steady rage regen so can use shield block more often. I don't think it will be all the time as you make it sound, maybe like every 20-30 sec or so.

I doubt Mastery will ever get so high that you don't need Shield block. But mastery will increase your crit blocks, and shield block gives you a good chance to "fish for crits" with block and get more rage via crit block enrage, which inturn allows you to use more damage abilities as well as shield block more often.

[Pua]

Nice to see lots of good commentary here. I’ll try and get through most of it meaningfully.

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.

I only listed the abilities that have value for mitigation. Using Disarm, Spell Reflect or Concussion Blow is pretty visceral and “active”, I’d say.

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.

The snag is that they’re currently implementing it very poorly. Currently, Death Strike is the only ability of the type you describe (which makes sense, in my opinion) and warriors are hopelessly limited in options as things stand. I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said you could macro Shield Block into all of your attacks. It would make you no less effective in a significant amount of the content.

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.

I don’t think shield tanks should be developed in this way. Death Strike is a unique mechanic to the DK and I would like to hope it remains that way; yeah, you get a heal and a shield, but how you choose to use them is what’s important.

With the shield tanks, it’s too static (as pointed out by EJL). There’s next to no choice because of the way block works and how it mitigates. It can’t be so good that it’s necessary and, right now, it’s falling into the category of being very poor so that it’s not a necessity.

Druids, unfortunately, appear to now be falling into this trap as well.

Nothing wrong with that - in theory. But it means that they are designing a class played by player A so it feels good for player B.

I know what you mean, it’s a very good point.

Thats partially a problem with a Paladins very limited toolkit. Prots really only got SotR and WoG - not really enough for an interesting choice. As it is, I did assume "no blocked/parried SotRs" and think thats where Hit and Expertise become important for tanking. If you miss then you don't get the buff. As you said, if it ends up that activating SotR activates the buff, then Hit and Expertise become much less meaningful. As for what to do with "excess" HP...there shouldn't be any.

I like this commentary, but think you’re potentially wrapping up several issues in one; not least the fact that HoPo (in my opinion) is an ugly system for Protection paladins; it doesn’t appear to have done them any favours. It essentially means that in a “resource to mitigation” world, paladins are managing two resources when mana is added. Personally, I’d rather see the Protection spec ditch HoPo altogether but understand that might make them feel too detached from the other specs.

The snag with expertise and hit is that in order to make them important, the trade off to not having them must be unpalatable. With the shield tanks, because of their bad options, it’s not. It’s really not. I get the feeling you’re not warm to the short term buff idea but, personally, I really think it’s the way to go with tanks and active mitigation. If all I’m going to get out of stacking hit and expertise is Shield Block, I’m going to reforge out of both just as easily as I’m doing it now.

I’m not sure “block” is the problem, and the developers are behaving as if it is. The problem is that the warrior and paladin toolkit is far too weak because they can block.

Active mitigation in this case is simply turning out to be an excuse to press buttons mindlessly - the return of the "pressing a button simply to maintain a shortlived buff" that Blizzard decided wasn't fun. One can argue that tanks like predictability and shouldn't worry too much about their rotation, threat and the like....but at the same time, one of the issues Catas Protadins faced was an overly static rotation.

I think the developers have mixed up “active” and “active mitigation” more than I have.

Remember, the issues aren’t individual problems to be solved – they’re all interlinked with one another and need to be tackled that way.[/QUOTE]

Sometimes the best feedback can come from the people with only a handful of experience. They aren't as bothered by changes can adapt to something like this a lot easier than some one who has adjusted to something for years. Just food for thought.

I absolutely agree; just not in this case. Too many players think the DK mitigation model consists solely of Death Strike, and that just isn’t true.

I want to point out that while you have some good points, you have written way too much "fluff" and it will get drowned out in the wall of text. That post on the official forums is way too long and I would suggest you condense it.

I know, I’m really bad for that. x_X

That said, I didn’t post it on the forums; I’m both European, and banned from the official forums.

-@Shield Slam. I also think removing the dispel off Shield Slam was pretty lame and should be put back.

Yep, bad move to put it back as a glyph. But… I think it could be used as a form of “active” mitigation. For example, build enough rage for your Shield Slam to do something and a dispel could be one of the choices.

Not thought that through properly, but you see what I mean.

-@Demo Shout. I don't see why you are complaining about the loss of Demo, now we just have to use Tclap instead of both demo and tclap. It may have been something to manage, but it was not very interesting. Bout the only good thing it did was if talented for 0 rage you could spam it and pull easier in dungeons lol.

“Not very interesting” is too subjective for me and I think you’re possibly underestimating the difference Demoralizing Shout made when used intelligently.

-@Thunderclap. IMO this should either cost 0 rage, or even generate like 5-10 rage. It would be like HotR for pallys, with our aoe generating our resource.

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.

-@Hit/Expertise. So melee will need like 8% Hit, and "8%" Expertise to cap dodge, and tanks need an extra 8% Expertise to cap parry right?

If they took that route, I’d be more inclined to simply say “your attacks can no longer be parried” in the Protection spec tooltip.

I don’t think they will, though. I get the distinct impression we’re just going to have to put up with parries which, when all is said and done, means there is even less encouragement to go for threat stats. You either stack expertise to a stupid amount, or accept that despite your best efforts your Shield Slam can still not connect.

It’s just not very well though through (or explained).

1. Warr's will not become avoidance tanks. We don't have any extra scaling for dodge/parry, and avoidance stats in general won't be that available for it to even be possible, or happen that often to be reliable. And damage won't be spiky either because of block, regardless of how much we get thru str or mastery, shield block will make sure of that.

I may have overstated this when compared to the “avoidance” tanks of TBC, but warriors are still going to be routinely reforging everything into avoidance as things stand. There is literally no reason to go for anything else.

2. Hit/expertise are important, every tank goes for the caps, atleast hit/dodge (parry might not always be feasible right away). Every tank will have to cap for this, not just warriors. And every tank will give up something to do it. So with these caps, it should ensure atleast some steady rage gen and damage.

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.

3. This last point seems to contradict everything you said. You seem to be assuming high avoidance, high hit/exp, high rage regen, and high block/mastery. Passive block is always good, for a boss or mobs, if you don't avoid the attack you can block it and mastery will help buff that to possibly crit. Assuming you cap "threat stats', you will have solid damage and steady rage regen so can use shield block more often. I don't think it will be all the time as you make it sound, maybe like every 20-30 sec or so.

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 doubt Mastery will ever get so high that you don't need Shield block. But mastery will increase your crit blocks, and shield block gives you a good chance to "fish for crits" with block and get more rage via crit block enrage, which inturn allows you to use more damage abilities as well as shield block more often.

That’s true, but the higher your passive block through mastery the less Shield Block does for you when activated. Like I said earlier, we haven’t stacked mastery in Cataclysm for Critical Block; we did it for CTC. So, assuming we’re running 100% passive block, we end up in the current paladin boat and going for avoidance again.

I know I’ve presented much of my argument separately, and that was necessary but disingenuous. The whole issue is linked and until the developers start viewing it as such, they’re simply going to be managing failure.

---------- Post added 2012-04-17 at 10:05 AM ----------

There are some good comments on the official forums, so I should comment on them here.

Primearc said:

”Make impending victory have no CD and cost rage instead”.

I think that’s a fairly good idea, but I wouldn’t want to rob Arms and Fury of it. Plus, I honestly feel that on-demand self-healing should remain the arena of the DK or paladin. It’s not really warrior or bear “flavour”, in my humble opinion.

That doesn’t make this a bad idea, though.

Breacca said:

”I could be overstating its importance (hard to tell without higher damage group content to test) but it seems like we're going to rely on Hit/Expertise as a mitigation stat, because the long cooldown of CS/HotR means we can't afford to miss.”

I think it’s likely that we’ll see this argument from the developers, lousy as it is. “You want hit and expertise, because you can’t afford your HoPo generating attacks to miss”.

The problem, of course, is that they still can. You cannot be reasonably expected to get parries off the table without help but, more than that, it’s not elegant design to require tanks to hit everything JUST so they can get HoPo moving. Unfortunately, this is unique to paladins because warriors will get Shield Block off eventually regardless.

Breacca also commented on what he or she believes to be the pointlessness of HoPo for Protection paladins. I agree with this sentiment.

Eralen said:

”Honestly, Paladin tanking feels like we're back in Wrath. Easy for me, but helaciously rough on the healers. I am incredibly squishy on beta.”

I think this may be related to number tweaking with regard to avoidance, but there’s also a “969” vibe going on here that I’ve seen from many longer term Protection paladins. The “rotation” is too formulaic, too predictable and too simple.

I don’t think a return to that would be something paladins would widely support. Amusingly, as things stand, the warrior rotation is about to gain complexity with Ultimatum being added as another proc on top of Sword and Board.

It’s bizarre.

[Talen]

I like this commentary, but think you’re potentially wrapping up several issues in one

I do that a bit....usually when I'm trying to be concise. If I don't I can ramble on quite a bit.

not least the fact that HoPo (in my opinion) is an ugly system for Protection paladins

In some ways, yes. Overall, I think it matters more as to how its developed and used. I don't think its a good fit for the current system; I have no doubt it'll work; after all its simply build 3 HP and then spend to improv your physical mitigation.

But there are, IMO, systems which can be molded around HP.

It really depends on how radical you want to be.

For example...if you want active mitigation, then do we really need all those passive stats on armor? Do warriors or Paladins need a shield AND block AND parry?

Speaking from a Paladin pov (I know you started the thread about warriors but I examined the Paladin more closely as it was the character I brought into beta), I could easily propose a tanking mechanic where the tank used DPS gear.

Advantage 1: No need for Vengeance. DPS scales with DPS armor.
Advantage 2: With no green tank stats, these would need to come from active moves.
e.g.
Ghost Strike equivalent: Increases dodge chance by X% for Ys per HP consumed
Armoring Strike: Energises your armor with Holy energy, reducing all/physical/magical damage by X% for Ys per HP
Shielding Strike: Creates a shield which absorbs X damage per HP consumed

And so on.

In other words, a layered defence where the Paladin weaves various defensive tools together to create and sustain his defences. Not a perfect system, but it shows other options exist, that HP can work within a tanking system. Sure, this system gives up (potentially) all those green stats and possibly even the block mechanic but does so in order that active tools can replace them. The downside is that tank survivability from these tools would be fairly static. Your STA would increase with gear but not your 15% dodge from Ghost Strike. Or maybe GS would deliver dodge rating instead of dodge %?

I get the feeling you’re not warm to the short term buff idea but, personally, I really think it’s the way to go with tanks and active mitigation.

I'm not. I dont think tanks need an overly complex rotation, but at the same time having an overly static rotation is bad as well. A mindlessly spammed shortterm buff tends to fall into the latter category. DS works because it isn't really mindless...it can be, but it doesn't need to be.

Right now, just looking at things, it feels as if Active Mitigation can be boiled own to:

If Resources at 60% of max, activate defensive tool, otherwise increase resources.

And that doesn't seem to be very compelling at all.

I like the idea of Active Mitigation, where the player must pay attention to his own defences and survival. Where he must build his resource and then spend it on survival, mitigation and recovery.

The DK system is like this, centred on DS. Not saying its perfect but its like this.
The Paladin HP model lends itself to the layered defence approach mentioned earlier.
Warriors and Druids use rage. The model I see useful here is perhaps based on FR or ER - consume rage at a constant rate to empower defences and heals. Buiold rgae and cosnume a bit at a time...or all at once for pwoer defences.

Ah well, if I ever get back in maybe I'll see if the system actually works.

EJL

[Deleted]

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.

Something that will make it so doing a bad rotation will make you take more damage overall. Screwing your short time CDs will make far harder to heal you on spikes/overall, if you refrain of using them when there is no need to save them.

Basically, the same things a pure dps have to care about but for mitigation. A real difference on toughness between a bad and a good tank, the same as there is a real difference between bad and good dps regardless of gear. With the present model, they are still very far away from it. And I do think they miss the point if they are just going to play around with making Shield Block more or less.

[Pua]

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.

Something that will make it so doing a bad rotation will make you take more damage overall. Screwing your short time CDs will make far harder to heal you on spikes/overall, if you refrain of using them when there is no need to save them.

Basically, the same things a pure dps have to care about but for mitigation. A real difference on toughness between a bad and a good tank, the same as there is a real difference between bad and good dps regardless of gear. With the present model, they are still very far away from it. And I do think they miss the point if they are just going to play around with making Shield Block more or less.

I'd hoped for something relatively similar, but with warriors particularly a solution (FINALLY) to our weaknesses of the past two expansions.

Unfortunately, it's become pretty clear that the warrior class designers aren't actually warrior players - and that's potentially the biggest problem of them all. I've also done a bit of Arms testing and it's a mess. Slam going from filler to rage spender reverses both its role, and completely relegates Heroic Strike.

Watch it get the Ultimatum treatment, too.

[Jackdemenzes]

I was thinking about the tanks being quite the reverse of DPS classes, in that DPS have quite a few buttons that they press repeatedly in a rotation or priority list, where as tanks, in regards to damage mitigation, have a few buttons that they press at key points (which I suppose is analgous to your DPS cooldowns for when the boss takes extra damage). A concept to equal the first half might be tanks being much more vulnerable than they are now, but having more abilities on much shorter durations that they need to keep going to remain survivable (like Death Strike, sort of). Rage/runic power dumping abilities feel a bit lacklustre in that they just do damage, which is not really what you're there for. Say if your Rune Strike gave you a 10 second buff that increased your dodge by 5% for the next three hits. Something like that anyway, ignore the numbers. A percent small enough that it's not an amazing cooldown per se but if your tank was balanced on the assumption that the buff was up, and without it your dodge was dangerously low, then tanks may gain that DPS feeling of juggling buffs, debuffs, rotating through key abilities.

On the other hand, and just to shoot my own argument down, I'm not sure that recreating the DPS experience for a tank is appropriate. I don't tank often but I've dipped my toe in a little and the part I enjoyed the most was the positioning requirements. Face the boss away, don't let him cleave the raid, tank him on the debuff circle, move him off the buff circle, those sorts of things. I think as long as fights have those sorts of mechanics they're enjoyable.

EDIT: Ah, Espada's examples were better than mine =P Apologies, I'm usually a read-through-the-whole-thread kinda guy! Got excited, jumped the gun a bit.

[emidas]

I would welcome every other Tanking class to the realm of active mitigation. Having tanked on my DK for the majority of two expansions now, and having had active mitigation for one of them, i have to say it makes tanking a lot more fun than mindlessly going through a rotation or priority system. Cycling cooldowns like Bone Shield, Anti-Magic Shield, Vampiric Blood, Dancing Rune Weapon, and Rune Tap among others, while timing Death Strikes correctly (so many people think you can mindlessly DS anytime and be a good tank, no) makes for a pleasureable yet challenging experience. I just got my beta invite this morning and am at work so i haven't tested the new changes in beta personally, but look forward to it.

[Pua]

I would welcome every other Tanking class to the realm of active mitigation. Having tanked on my DK for the majority of two expansions now, and having had active mitigation for one of them, i have to say it makes tanking a lot more fun than mindlessly going through a rotation or priority system. Cycling cooldowns like Bone Shield, Anti-Magic Shield, Vampiric Blood, Dancing Rune Weapon, and Rune Tap among others, while timing Death Strikes correctly (so many people think you can mindlessly DS anytime and be a good tank, no) makes for a pleasureable yet challenging experience. I just got my beta invite this morning and am at work so i haven't tested the new changes in beta personally, but look forward to it.

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.

It’s perverse.

[Deleted]

I can only mimic what Espada said, my idea of active mitigation was lots of small cooldowns or reactional abilities that effect our survival ("When you receive a fully non mitigated physical attack use this ability to increase your block chance by 20% for 10 sec" or something) but the reality of it seems to be that they've just given each tank a version of the old spammy annoying shield block. I mean paladin seems even less active on beta than it is on normal losing holy shield (or having it made passive) and guarded by the light.

Hoping it gets changed at some point I'd love to run a dungeon and at the end of it have the healer say that i was easy to heal because i used all my skills rather than being because i outgeared it by 2 tiers.

[checking facts]

I worry a little that "active mitigation" is getting used by various players to just mean "how I want tanking to be." The designers use it for a pretty specific meaning, so let me redefine it here.

Active mitigation is using your resources for defensive purposes.

Having a bunch of free cooldowns isn't active mitigation (using our strict definition) because you could still be an effective tank by standing there not attacking a boss and cycling free cooldowns. We don't think that would be fun. Hitting a boss with your weapons (or bear claws) is more fun. However, for many tanks, hitting a boss just to contribute 30-50% of the damage of a DPS class isn't very engaging either. Active mitigation converts your rage, runes, energy or holy power into survival. (Not guaranteed survival, because then you won't need healers at all -- but it should provide enough granularity that great tanks survive more than average tanks.)

As an aside, having some free cooldowns is fun and useful. However, it's not our goal to make sure each tank has the exact same number and character of cooldowns. In fact, we think it's a little dull. How disappointing it would be to get your Brewmaster to 90 only to discover she had all the same abilities as your paladin, with different names and icons? As long as the various tanks can handle every encounter with about the same effectiveness and relative skill, we think the system works. We haven't always nailed that, especially in early Lich King, but we think it has been the case for more recent content.

Some of you are characterizing active mitigation as "I spam my finisher." You could probably do that and be a somewhat effective LFR tank. For more challenging content, you'll often want to save your abilities a few seconds for when you need them most. Waiting too long doesn't make sense, because then you're just wasting your resources, and besides, you have the free cooldowns for the really big boss attacks, as well as plenty of healer cooldowns.

For example, if the boss is about to buff himself with something that makes his swings bigger and he does that every 15 seconds or so (too frequently for Shield Wall) and your health is relatively stable (meaning you're not about to die, but you also don't want to just soak the attack) then it makes sense to hold your Shield Block for when a block mitigates 50,000 damage instead of 30,000 damage. Now, if you are about to die, Shield Block RIGHT NOW might be much more attractive. In fact, you might also use Last Stand or Shield Wall, but then of course those abilities won't be available for a couple of minutes. Those kinds of decisions are the ones that (in my experience) tanks find enjoyable and a test of experience and skill.

I think it's simplistic to say that hit / expertise and finishers work against each other. That's like saying that avoidance and mitigation work against each other, because if you avoid an attack, then the mitigation is wasted. It is typically only a problem if you can stack a particular stat to infinity, reach a hard cap, or if one stat is dramatically more valuable than another. A warrior with low hit won't have enough rage for Shield Block. A warrior with low mastery will block a lot, but not mitigate enough damage. A warrior with low avoidance will take predictable damage but drain healer mana. A warrior with low Stamina might not be able to survive a big hit that lands at the same time as a magic attack. Ideally, players can focus on various stat allocations to find out what feels right for them or even tailor gear for particular fights (within reason -- we're not going back to resist gear anytime soon).

If you think a particular stat is undervalued, by all means let us know, but you're probably going to have to provide some math to make your argument. We also don't spend a great deal of effort balancing all of the numbers in beta until we're happy with the abilities -- there is no point making Shield of the Righteous play really nice with mastery if we decide to redesign the ability.

I'm honestly not that worried about our team being able to balance all the tanks. The tank classes were all close enough in Dragon Soul that most raiding groups were able to use their existing main tanks, even on heroic fights, yet there were still some situations where various tanks shined and they felt different enough that a Blood DK wasn't just a warrior blocking with a sword instead of a shield. If balance is something we can solve, then the big thing to worry about is whether or not tanking is fun. We don't think standing there doing nothing, or standing there trying to maximize DPS is going to be fun for tanks, so we want the attacks to translate into some amount of tank survivability. That's the intent behind active mitigation in a nutshell.

I know I have spent a lot of effort discussing and attempting to explain the design intent here, but we really want to get it right.

[Lotharfox]

The original post was excellent, and makes me worried for MoP Tanking. I've also read Pally and Bear forums, and they basically say the same thing. I could not wait to hear what kind of response this got, hoping to hear, "It's early Beta, we know there's an issue, we have some changes coming."

Instead, Ghostcrawler pretty much said, "Working as intended, we'll tweak the numbers later."

/sigh

"Active mitigation is using your resources for devensive purposes."

Instead, we have two defensive abilities that use up a whole lot of rage? More than half, so we won't be sitting on extra rage. It seems like the only change is that instead of building rage from being attacked, we build rage from attacking, and our defensive abilities that cost rage, now cost more rage than before. I don't believe that should be called "active mitigation."

Active seems like I should be in control of how I defend. Imagine a situation where you move to dodge, hit one button to block, or one to parry. Basically, the buttons you hit are what keep you alive, meanwhile threat is maintained by auto attack or an occasional taunt ability.

GC said that it isn't interesting to tanks to just be another DPS but doing less dmg. But that's what we are with just a few survival buttons. And those are hit either when ready (as shield block seems to be now), or when DBM gives you a certain warning (Psychic Drain off cooldown or Amalgamation hitting 9 stacks). I just don't think the way they use active mitigation and the way I use it is the same.

I love the OP's write up, and I wish it had more impact at Blizz. "It's only Beta," doesn't mean anything if Blizz is saying everything went in the way they wanted and they won't reevaluate. If there is a change, it won't be until the following Xpac.

[Pua]

It's a wee bit late to get back to this tonight, but I'm amazed that Ghostcrawler has gotten in on the discussion... And completely unsurprised that he's almost entirely missed the boat. I'm not confused with the developer definition of active mitigation; I'm saying that the definition needs worked because it's currently terrible.