Is Vengeance Getting Out Of Control?

[celinamuna]

A good tank takes less damage by using their defensive abilities correctly and moving better along with the mechanics? A tanks job was never to deal damage, they should never be concerned with how much damage they put out. That's the DPS' job.

Using that logic we should take away any self healing from dps, and gut mistweaver / disc because healer's job is to heal, not to dps.
Which sounds like fun and logical game, except games changed so about time people would adapt to it.

[Eternal Ice]

Why the hell do some people care so much what others do?

omg others enjoy LFR? well i don't! so it must be removed!!11

omg others enjoy pvp? well i don't! so it must be removed!!11

omg tanks are doing decent damage making the group to move faster? oh no! that must not happen, I don't care if it benefits the group, the roles are sacred and traditions must be respected! tanks shouldn't do damage! no, that's wrong!!!111

[Kolo]

You're right. It doesn't. However, in what fantasy / swords and sorcery game (or most any medium for that matter) do tanks - the characters built around defense (sword and board fighter for instance) - do more damage than someone who forfeits defense for offense (your typical rogue, ranger, wizard character)? Is it bad that WoW is different in that respect? Not necessarily, but it certainly can be jarring when you've come to rely upon particular fantasy archetypes.

You can build a character in any pen and paper RPG that deals almost as much damage as a defenseless player because the only thing that matter for damage dealing in those games is the correct primary stat and a good weapon. Even if you don't want to admit it the tank should never deal pitiful amounts damage to make bad dps feel better about themselves. I love our tank because he makes me try harder at dps and new players have no idea how much damage a tank is doing at low levels because new players don't go out and load up on damage meters.

[Bepples]

Honestly, the defenders of Vengeance all seem to be saying that they like Vengeance because they like doing really good damage

Nice generalization, but the issue is more complicated than you might think. Vengeance gives tanks attack power, which increases their damage done by all abilities. That's the obvious part. What you are missing is that it also increases self healing and absorption effects by huge amounts. Note how on tough damage fights, paladin tanks in particular top both damage AND healing meters. Vengeance can push our Sacred Shield absorption from 40k every few secs to 140k+. Our seal of insight can begin to heal for 50k+ every other hit, while battle healer heals raid members for amounts upwards of 20k. It might sound OP, but on very high damage fights like H Horridon, we NEED this to survive. It is not just about these supposed egotistical tanks wanting to do high DPS as you would like to think.

The total removal of vengeance at this time would be nothing short of catastrophic for the PvE scene. EVERY boss of the expansion would have to be retuned, otherwise it would be virtually impossible for the harder ones at least to be tanked. Challenge modes will be totally screwed too. Look at how tanks perform in PvP right now, where there is no vengeance. To detail, prot paladins at least in PvP right now are probably as viable as they were in vanilla (a.k.a. when the spec was useless and broken in every sense of the word).

All for what? To make DPS feel better about themselves due to their meter ranks? To be clear: vengeance really isn't harming anyone at all, unless you have a tank that stands in shit to increase vengeance (in which case, it is the fault of the tank). How does it truly affect you directly when you see tanks topping meters? Why should it bother you? I have a DPS toon too, and you know what I do when I see a tank beating me? Nothing, really. I don't care, and you shouldn't either. The fact that you are supportive of a decision that would truly break the PvE scene unless a huge effort in retuning is undertaken, for the sake of damage dealers feeling better about themselves, really sheds light on who is really being egotistical here.

[hidey0shi]

I think it's potentialy very confusing to new players who roll a dps class but see tanks do 3 or 4 times more damage. Vengeance isn't really a problem at 90, but anywhere lower than that it should be toned down imo.

[Bepples]

Vengence is out of control for paladins mostly. But that's because they pretty much use ret gear at this point.

Partially. Vengeance works really well for Prot paladins as it increases the absorption of our Sacred Shield, and the healing done by our Seal of Insight. Those effects also happen to scale really well with haste too, which is why we use the DPS gear (non-crit gear, however). So at high vengeance levels, we get pretty incredible amounts of self healing/absorbing. I am speaking in terms of mitigation, of course. With DPS, it certainly combines well with the haste gear that we use, but our DPS really isn't the important one.

They will probably be overhauled to use DPS gear like everyone else pretty soon. Probably won't tank anymore once that happens though because tanking in DPS gear just feels wrong.

This is like saying that Hunters using melee gear is wrong, when referring to their using expertise in MoP. Haste benefits our mitigation more than Dodge and Parry do, does that not make haste a tanking stat? If it does, does that not make haste gear tanking gear and not just DPS gear?

[ATron52]

You can build a character in any pen and paper RPG that deals almost as much damage as a defenseless player because the only thing that matter for damage dealing in those games is the correct primary stat and a good weapon. Even if you don't want to admit it the tank should never deal pitiful amounts damage to make bad dps feel better about themselves. I love our tank because he makes me try harder at dps and new players have no idea how much damage a tank is doing at low levels because new players don't go out and load up on damage meters.

I'm assuming you've never really played many pen and paper games then. Generally speaking, a one handed weapon will not only hit for less than someone dual wielding / two handed / bow / spells, but it also doesn't receive as high of a modifier to damage. 3E D&D for instance, a longsword will hit for 1d8+str modifier, whereas a greatsword hits for 2d6+(1.5)str modifier. With an 18 Str at level one, you go from hitting for 1d8+4 with a longsword to 2d6+6 with a great sword. In essence, a guy with a sword and shield will hit for about 66% of what a guy with a big sword hits for (it's not exact, but close). That falls exactly into the "tank DPS should be between 1/2 and 3/4 of an equally geared player that I've been suggesting. There are also numerous other examples in pen and paper games I can point out - I have to get ready for work right now but I assure you that they exist.

Nice generalization, but the issue is more complicated than you might think. Vengeance gives tanks attack power, which increases their damage done by all abilities. That's the obvious part. What you are missing is that it also increases self healing and absorption effects by huge amounts. Note how on tough damage fights, paladin tanks in particular top both damage AND healing meters. Vengeance can push our Sacred Shield absorption from 40k every few secs to 140k+. Our seal of insight can begin to heal for 50k+ every other hit, while battle healer heals raid members for amounts upwards of 20k. It might sound OP, but on very high damage fights like H Horridon, we NEED this to survive. It is not just about these supposed egotistical tanks wanting to do high DPS as you would like to think.

The total removal of vengeance at this time would be nothing short of catastrophic for the PvE scene. EVERY boss of the expansion would have to be retuned, otherwise it would be virtually impossible for the harder ones at least to be tanked. Challenge modes will be totally screwed too. Look at how tanks perform in PvP right now, where there is no vengeance. To detail, prot paladins at least in PvP right now are probably as viable as they were in vanilla (a.k.a. when the spec was useless and broken in every sense of the word).

All for what? To make DPS feel better about themselves due to their meter ranks? To be clear: vengeance really isn't harming anyone at all, unless you have a tank that stands in shit to increase vengeance (in which case, it is the fault of the tank). How does it truly affect you directly when you see tanks topping meters? Why should it bother you? I have a DPS toon too, and you know what I do when I see a tank beating me? Nothing, really. I don't care, and you shouldn't either. The fact that you are supportive of a decision that would truly break the PvE scene unless a huge effort in retuning is undertaken, for the sake of damage dealers feeling better about themselves, really sheds light on who is really being egotistical here.

#1) I have never once stated removal / change Vengeance in 5.4 or mid expansion. I fully realize that in order to do something that big, it'll completely screw up balance in many aspects of the game. If you'd read my posts in this thread, I mention that numerous times.

#2) Since I've never stated I want to remove / change it mid expansion, balance of current content will not matter. If they changed it, tanks and boss damage in 6.0 would be balanced accordingly. There's absolutely no reason for a Protection Paladin to top both damage done and healing done. Why make the already most important job in a raid feel more important?

#3) I don't believe DPS wanting to do more damage than a tank is very egotistical at all, actually. If you work as a car salesman but the guy from accounting is selling almost as much or more than you pretty routinely, wouldn't you feel a little strange? That's a strange example, sure, but sales and accounting are two completely different jobs that are working together for the business. Is his success hurting you? Not necessarily, but it does diminish the value of your job, even though your car lot only needs on accountant.

[lunchbox2042]

Am I the only one who get depressed when I see I'm out dpsing everyone as a tank? Tanks are about mitigating and avoiding damage. Let DPS have their job back.

[Bepples]

My problem with that cap is that tanks will still do whatever they can to reach the cap. It's silly to put a cap on it because then people feel the NEED to always be at that cap. It's like with valor points, people feel like they have to cap every week when they really don't have to. The entire reason they added vengence was so that tanks could keep up with the DPS in the raid threat-wise. But then they took out threat management all together. A tank shouldn't put out big numbers, everything they do should be about taking the least amount of damage possible. Vengeance just contradicts everything it means to be a tank the way it currently is, and will still do so after it is hard capped. Even if you get 90% of your max vengeance just from tanking the boss people will still feel the need to get that last 10%.

Basically I think a tank should be about taking as little damage as possible and not about trying to min/max DPS. That is the entire reason DPS specs exist in the first place.

I must be one of those weird outlying tanks that still focuses on optimal management of incoming damage and doesn't stand in fires or anything for increased vengeance.

[Pua]

This is like saying that Hunters using melee gear is wrong, when referring to their using expertise in MoP. Haste benefits our mitigation more than Dodge and Parry do, does that not make haste a tanking stat? If it does, does that not make haste gear tanking gear and not just DPS gear?

I think his point is that avoidance is likely to go the way of the dodo in 6.0, which means conventional DPS stats (such as haste or critical strike) are going to become mitigation stats for all plate tanks, rather than just paladins. I asked Ghostcrawler on Twitter about the future of avoidance and he said "it probably won't work the way it does now". The implication, for me, is that avoidance will still exist, but not on gear.

As for the topic, yeah; Vengeance is nonsense. It was brought in to deal with a non-existant problem, Blizzard found another solution to that, so then they tacked some active mitigation on top of it rather than just removing it.

It's the very definition of a self-licking lollipop.

It exists solely for its own sake.

[Deleted]

Tanks have 500% increased threat all the time, not just the first hit.
A 100% TPS increase wouldn't be fun.

The game is supposed to be fun. When threat and survivability are never an issue, what else is there to have fun as a tank?
As others have stated, dealing damage AND using your active mitigation skills/CDs at the right moment is what separates good tanks from bad ones. Why not keep it that way?


Also, use your own advice. A tank dealing more damage than you does not affect your own role in whatever you're gonna do.


Furthermore, and I'm not trying to sound elitist in any way or shape, but are there any heroic raiders who have a problem with the fact that tanks are doing so much damage these days or is it just the normal mode raiders who want this changed?

My only beef is, when the damage dealing tank is gimping it for others, because in our raids its no issue really, but when im in lfr, or a dungeon trying to get some vp and some tank just wants to top the meters, causing the healer to go oom, kills us all and starts flaming the healer for not being good enough. Tanking might become boring but it has never been about dps - focus more on mitigation and cd yea but you cant say that dealing good dmg is what seperates a good tank from a bad tank. A good tank stays alive and makes sure his raid is not taking damage that he could take. A bad tank tries to cheese the meters on the expense of everybody else

[Bepples]

A couple notes.

A) all avoided/absorbed/mitigated attacks will give 2% of UNMITIGATED damage (or, for dodge/parry, average of the total damage, or more then actually taking the hit) as vengeance.

B) There will be no vengeance mechanic change mid-expansion. There MIGHT be a vengeance change next expansion.

C) Currently, there is NO vengeance cap coming in next patch. GC said it was on the table, but it hasn't been implemented on the 5.4 PTR. What HAS happened is that vengeance from getting crit has been nerfed- crit is simply extra damage taken.

D) If the 5.4 vengeance changes actually did come in, only 10/25 man would be capped by the wording of what GC said. LFR/5 man/Challenge modes would remain the same.

E) Capping vengeance all around would nerf tanks greatly in challenge modes, and would make 80% of comps invalid for gold (Anyone with a tank). Tanks depend on HP-capped vengeance AND proper execution of cooldowns/stuns for gold times.

Finally, a re-iteration on an earlier post- there are only a very, VERY few fights where tanks will have enough vengeance to out-dps GOOD dps. For these fights, the amount of incoming damage on the tanks is enough that they HAVE to have that high amount of AP to actually survive. (DKs tend to be not as good on these fights, such as Ra-Den, since thier mitigation does not scale with AP)

This is probably the most important post of the thread. A lot of people are misunderstanding vengeance: Tanks do not top damage every fight, only high-damage fights. We certainly do not triple other people's dps unless the fight is ridiculously damage intensive for the total duration (eg. solo tanking Raden). Also, vengeance is VERY important for mitigation, as well. If you had vengeance caps or no vengeance at all, good luck with the current state of heroic horridon, iron qon, raden etc.

[Deleted]

Have fun keeping people tanking w/o high veng.
And "dps can't compete with tanks while lvling" sounds like bad dps, while leveling multiple toons (hunter,mage,shaman) never have i ran into a problem of not being able to out dps tank.

I had 1.3-1.5k steady dps with my warrior as soon as I gained Revenge. Both single target and AoE. Sounds like a bad tank if he let you out dps him.



On the vengeance thing; It's not a problem in low level if you ask me. The base damage is incredibly high, which results in tanks out dpsing everyone, especially warriors. If a tank doesn't have the highest dps, they certainly don't know how to maximize it. 1k dps at lvl 30 is not a strong feat.

About max level; I've actually never seen a tank out dps a regular damage dealer in single target unless their gear difference is very high and if it's in a heroic dungeon. Our DK tank tops 80k from what I've seen and he's the best geared player in our group (we're all below 530 at the moment though). We have a 510 lock that doesn't know his rotation at all and he's sitting at 80k on some fights, which is way below the rest of us.

[Socialhealer]

Ra-den is proof it's already fucked up, tanks doing 500k+ single target while the best dps can't even manage 300k.

[Bepples]

Ra-den is proof it's already fucked up, tanks doing 500k+ single target while the best dps can't even manage 300k.

So the tank does more damage than the damage dealers....what actual negative effect is there besides "it feels wrong"?

[Pua]

So the tank does more damage than the damage dealers....what actual negative effect is there besides "it feels wrong"?

Flipping that on its head, what's the positive aspect of it?

[Vasilisa]

Flipping that on its head, what's the positive aspect of it?

Boss dies faster.

[Shinrael]

Noone cares about levelling dungeons. (The game is balanced around endgame)

I hate being refered to as Noone but I must say indeed I DO care.


Seriously: I love leveling especially low levels when mobs don't have that much health and I must say that doesn't really bother me but I do care about low level content and you cannot deny that.

[Diamondium]

Personally, I think it's balanced perfect at 90, as it makes the tanks usually 5-10 on my dps meters for 25 mans in raids. I don't really have an issue with it there.

I do really wish they'd put more effort into making it more balanced at low levels though. I know it's hard to balance low levels for everything, but here is where the effort should be made. It just doesn't feel right when I level a tank and look at recount and notice I'm doing 70% of the group's damage by myself, while also having sufficient heals to heal myself without a healer. Most tank classes can pretty much just solo any instance they come across without even outleveling it up until 65-70 if they really felt like it, and some even past that.

[Eranthe]

Tanks are supposed to worry about their health and their ability to hold aggro on their target(s). this is a long established pair of facts.

Damage dealers are supposed to worry about their outgoing damage, and staying alive and not risking the well-being of the raid. again, these are well known facts.

if tanks do more damage than damage dealing classes, what's the point of damage dealing classes? why don't we just all roll brewmasters and take turns taunting the boss and doing awesome dps?

the point of the nerf vengeance argument is that it undermines damage dealers and makes them feel inferior, when it may or may not have anything to do with the tank's skill level, and may have more to do with standing in fire on purpose to shoot their vengeance up.

when i first hit 90 a day or 2 into the expansion and went prot so we could kill galleon, i was top dps by a large margin. i was shocked, and i quickly thought to myself, "it must not scale well, or else tanks are going to outdps the dps classes, and that would be stupid." lo and behold, months later, here we are, tanks purposefully standing in bad and doing 500k dps.