Celestalon on Demo tanking

[Munemasa]

ok so here's the thing having played a lock most of the way through-out WoW's life time gotta point out they have got to tank a raid level boss every xpac aside from MoP in which we finally got almost a full toolkit to do so, now a lock in DA within a week ok MoP going life tanking Heroics was possible even without the 6% crit immunity, that being in mostly greens, and a handful of quest blues possible, basically entry level to queue.

Now having scoured MMO-champion for PTR notes a couple come to mind that really had they been implemented would have made lock tanking a thing.

Archimonde's Vengeance has been redesigned each time the Warlock or their pet takes damage, the Warlock now gains 1.5% of the unmitigated damage back as spell power for 20 seconds.

Give back Fel Armor now reduces damage taken by 10%
undo Fel Armor now grants 10% health, rather than 10% Stamina.

Nether Plating give us back the 6% crit immunity

with those the only thing really missing is a second Active Mitigation option cause we all know that Fury ward would be boss with vengeance, hell with soul leech you could amass a fairly sizable shield fairly quick with Molten Core procs, but really we would need a % based skill to balance things easier ala shield block, Shield of the Righteous, savage defense.

Curse of Enfeeblement = weakening blows
Unending Resolve = Divine Protection only better 40% DR or and additional 10% all the time
Dark Soul: Knowledge + 30% mastery which ends up being 20% around reduction = Ardent Defender minus the non gibbing
Provokation = taunt at the change of a flag
Fury Ward = Shield Barrier sp/ap = shield
Demonic leap = heroic leap
Hand of Guldan = Consecrate
Corruption = Deseases,
500% threat mod

So at my count we have 2 anti insta-gibber, we have 500% threat, we have 1 of 2 Active mitigation, we have quick travel, 25% base Damage reduction, a tanking rotation

now what we need something to match the dodge/parry/Block % difference base being around 6% while we have 10% healing buff (so possibly a increased healing factor based on spirit), a second Active mitigation choice. i cant think of any thing we are missing after that, this is all before talents and glyphs so to be thorough

tier 1
2/3 can be used to tank
tier 2
3/3 control or heal tanking
Tier 3
3/3 tanking usable
Tier 4
2/3 tanking useful
Tier 5
1 pretty much best choice 1 usable
Tier 6
1 choice here with the changes show

Glyphs
4 out right tank choices
eternal resolve
siphon life
healthstone
Demon hunting
unending resolve

this concludes rant i count 2 things that need addressing that they don't have code for so i would put it around 70% done last 10% being balancing

[Brusalk]

ok so here's the thing having played a lock most of the way through-out WoW's life time gotta point out they have got to tank a raid level boss every xpac aside from MoP in which we finally got almost a full toolkit to do so, now a lock in DA within a week ok MoP going life tanking Heroics was possible even without the 6% crit immunity, that being in mostly greens, and a handful of quest blues possible, basically entry level to queue.

Now having scoured MMO-champion for PTR notes a couple come to mind that really had they been implemented would have made lock tanking a thing.

Archimonde's Vengeance has been redesigned each time the Warlock or their pet takes damage, the Warlock now gains 1.5% of the unmitigated damage back as spell power for 20 seconds.

Give back Fel Armor now reduces damage taken by 10%
undo Fel Armor now grants 10% health, rather than 10% Stamina.

Nether Plating give us back the 6% crit immunity

with those the only thing really missing is a second Active Mitigation option cause we all know that Fury ward would be boss with vengeance, hell with soul leech you could amass a fairly sizable shield fairly quick with Molten Core procs, but really we would need a % based skill to balance things easier ala shield block, Shield of the Righteous, savage defense.

Curse of Enfeeblement = weakening blows
Unending Resolve = Divine Protection only better 40% DR or and additional 10% all the time
Dark Soul: Knowledge + 30% mastery which ends up being 20% around reduction = Ardent Defender minus the non gibbing
Provokation = taunt at the change of a flag
Fury Ward = Shield Barrier sp/ap = shield
Demonic leap = heroic leap
Hand of Guldan = Consecrate
Corruption = Deseases,
500% threat mod

So at my count we have 2 anti insta-gibber, we have 500% threat, we have 1 of 2 Active mitigation, we have quick travel, 25% base Damage reduction, a tanking rotation

now what we need something to match the dodge/parry/Block % difference base being around 6% while we have 10% healing buff (so possibly a increased healing factor based on spirit), a second Active mitigation choice. i cant think of any thing we are missing after that, this is all before talents and glyphs so to be thorough

tier 1
2/3 can be used to tank
tier 2
3/3 control or heal tanking
Tier 3
3/3 tanking usable
Tier 4
2/3 tanking useful
Tier 5
1 pretty much best choice 1 usable
Tier 6
1 choice here with the changes show

Glyphs
4 out right tank choices
eternal resolve
siphon life
healthstone
Demon hunting
unending resolve

this concludes rant i count 2 things that need addressing that they don't have code for so i would put it around 70% done last 10% being balancing

The second active mitigation talent could be addressed by letting healthstone have a greatly reduced CD and a fury cost while not consuming charges. That would give the self-heal active mitigation ability most tanks have on top of the self-absorb most also have.

They could also greatly reduce the duration of Aura of Weakness letting that be the damage reduction active mitigation ability similar to things like shuffle.

[Munemasa]

The problem with the heal shield style of tanking ishandsm stacking to deal with damage spikes, not to mention we already have huge range of different self heals Or rather self shield options 2-3%p5 0.5% per mob, soul leech, drain/harvest life. What we really need yo balance is a flat % damage reduction like shield block, shield of the righteous, shuffle or savage defense

From a personal CD point of view we are superior to most tanks already, about on page with pallies, dark regent+ imp health stone = preemptive lay on hands, then we have unending resolve = divine proctection , dark soul = ardent defender, Dark bargain = guardian of ancient kings only its better but costs us a fair bit seeing as soullink gosac is the preferred build cause that 20% extra health is a fair difference in self healing, we have nothing to match devotion aura or antimagic zone but that's raid utility which we get in soul stone

[Orloth]

This is what I get for not stopping by on a regular basis. I miss stuff.

Most of that list we already have, the rest is internal number changes.

UI support: What special UI support does a Prot Warrior have that we don't? Once everything else is covered, just let us que as tanks.
Active Mitigation Skills: Fury Ward and Drain Life, just balance them around the tank build.
Multiple Cooldowns: We have more defensive Cooldowns then a Brewmaster, before talents are figured in.
Talents with defensive benefit: We have plenty of those too, though they might want to balance out tiers 1,3, and 5, I don't see any major hurdles.
Glyphs with defensive benefit: And your standard tanks don't have much in the way of those either, something about Glyphs being optional.
An interesting defensive rotation: Um, make Soul Fire Instant under Molten Core and it's comparable to a Prot Warrior's rotation in buttons and complexity.
Defensive Value for all stats: Well, you got me, maybe that will have to be figured (kinda like for all other tanks). It's not like stat conversions are hard, are they?
Vengeance: Just give
DPS tuning: K, how is that different from a DPS spec's DPS tuning?
Mob Control abilities: You mean like threat, and stuns? Have it.
Defensive Mechanics that scale at the right rate: Quit breaking Mastery!!!
Community Understanding: I'm starting to think the community knows more about Warlock tanking then you.

None of this seems insurmountable to me, and all of it seems that it would be done during expansion development regardless of the role of any given spec, especially with the changes already being made in WoD (tank scaling w/o Dodge/Parry, and item squish). It would just be different criteria for a new role. An honest answer would be "because we don't want Warlocks to tank". I could be wrong, but my bullshit sense is tingling on this.

[Prag]

I read that, considered the previous discussions they've indulged in and concluded that they just don't want it. They didn't want to change old race models, either. Maybe it will change with more outcry?

[Christan]

For every single expansion since LK so far (potentially Vanilla and BC too, but I wasn't around back then)

vanilla arms in defensive stance had a threat increase on mortal strike if memory serves me right.
in BC i had a ret friend who would plow through most heroics with my priest.
so yep back then even. don't think i'd done some of the more painfull heroics with him but did a ton of them even hMGT(most of the mobs did magic damage so tanks didn't take much less anyway) and that's without CC, didn't have personal experience with it in vanilla but when you got a geared tank and 1 dd in brd stuff just died pretty sure arm's could of done it back then(especially with cross talents, was rogue/combat daggers back then, had pts in all trees(didn't do much pve mostly farming cath for small radiants to sell, trying to farm for epic mount...dropped herb and picked up mining at the best possible time, made thousands and got epic flying in BC off the bat...
if an undergeared rogue can kill lvl 40 bosses, solo, without much difficulty...then pretty sure a well geared arms war could do 60 stuff.

i'd be a HUGE fan of having a demo lock offtanking some raid bosses (like illidan in demon form andleotheras in demon form) or mage tank on high king for the caster....
BC had it right with certain DD being able to offtank bosses...

well except for rogues being able to do gruul and Mother Sharazz(BT) because they could get dodge cap and literally be unhittable... that was pure BS...

so actually tanks for locks??? nope..
some offtank utility where you'd want them or a mage? sure, i'd love it.

[Orloth]

I read that, considered the previous discussions they've indulged in and concluded that they just don't want it. They didn't want to change old race models, either. Maybe it will change with more outcry?

I don't mind so much if they just don't want it to happen. Delete the glyph and move on. It's the fact that the Glyph of Demon Hunting exists in it's current (heavily nerfed) incarnation, combined with "it would be too much work" answers, that bothers me. Do or don't, don't leave us in limbo.

[Munemasa]

Defensive value to stats already there
Haste speeds up drain life and corruption and cast time of soul fire maybe add it effects spell recharge time for fury ward
Crit helps with soul fire damage meaning more shield from soul leech
Mastery primary defensive stat
And if they make spirit equal in value to dodge/parry as a healing buff that gives us 4 stats to chase outside of Stam.

As for the rotation that I would have to run numbers on depend and on exact build/stats and encounter because that is going to change dramaticly with gear

[PickleballAce]

I guess with tanking stats going away with the exception of bonus armor, the gearing problem isn't such an issue.

Unfortunately they won't do it without adding a fourth spec and we're probably too far down the line for that to appear in WoD so.....maybe for the expansion after that.

[blackblade]

I guess with tanking stats going away with the exception of bonus armor, the gearing problem isn't such an issue.

Unfortunately they won't do it without adding a fourth spec and we're probably too far down the line for that to appear in WoD so.....maybe for the expansion after that.

I do agree that trying to pivot a tanking spec off a glyph is probably asking a lot, a 4th spec is more or less the only way this can happen. They need to keep the pet usable, and have it logical to have one out, either giving the tanks an extra active mitigation button based on pet or some other reason to take something other than Grimoire of Sac.

I dunno if it's completely off the table or not. They know there's a significant following for it.

[Munemasa]

Old soullink shared health pool version acts the same as gosac add in a perma misdirection makes gosup a nice choice too, making goserv useful for a tank however is a different thing altogeather, but then there is the but then you still have to take soullink problem for the health boost. Again fairly easy to address make soul link a base skill for locktank, and give us a different talent.

Having all the pets out gives you something that gosacing doesn't, imp cauterize master, voidy shadow bulwark,suffering, hound ,consume magic, felgaurd stun, additional aoe. The only one that doesn't is the succy

My aim isn't to use a glyph to make us a tank it to show how far we are off it with available code, seeing as I'm pretty sure that blizz would have backups of old code and I dare say that blizz uses object based coding meaning all this could effective be done solo in an afternoon aside from balancing

[Jessicka]

I read that, considered the previous discussions they've indulged in and concluded that they just don't want it. They didn't want to change old race models, either. Maybe it will change with more outcry?

They did want to do the race models, they were just always going to be a huge task and felt there were better things to do.

The whole Glyph thing was a nice idea to test/show what a Glyph is capable of; it won't be cut because it does have a niche purpose and they don't generally tend to cut things like that. It's obvious they've pulled away from it though as a full blown thing, because they keep saying as much.

Its all very well saying "just do X, Y or Z with this spell or that spell", but that would 100% play like a botched bandaided mess. If they do want to eventually get around to it, then they will want to do it from the ground up; not by simply making 'tweaks'.

[Munemasa]

Its all very well saying "just do X, Y or Z with this spell or that spell", but that would 100% play like a botched bandaided mess. If they do want to eventually get around to it, then they will want to do it from the ground up; not by simply making 'tweaks'.

i agree if it was lets just slap this, this, and this together it would be a band-aid mess, however what i've proposed isn't just slapping things together, its undoing the removal of 10% damage reduction from felarmor,reverting the 10% health to 10%stam on felarmor, giving nether plating back the 6%crit immune changes for the proposed new spec only giving it vengeance, making use of Spirit cloth on something other then priests, and giving it a new skill with a mastery based flat % active mitigation, the only other thing i would suggest would be changing void ray to a wave/cone damage circle.

As for the soul link thing well it would be nice to have that as a standard for all the specs again and a new talent would be nice to take its place but it is in no way require to make locks full blown tanks

[Jessicka]

i agree if it was lets just slap this, this, and this together it would be a band-aid mess, however what i've proposed isn't just slapping things together, its undoing the removal of 10% damage reduction from felarmor,reverting the 10% health to 10%stam on felarmor, giving nether plating back the 6%crit immune changes for the proposed new spec only giving it vengeance, making use of Spirit cloth on something other then priests, and giving it a new skill with a mastery based flat % active mitigation, the only other thing i would suggest would be changing void ray to a wave/cone damage circle.

As for the soul link thing well it would be nice to have that as a standard for all the specs again and a new talent would be nice to take its place but it is in no way require to make locks full blown tanks

It's reverting it to basically where it was in Beta where it was grotesquely overpowered because tanking was rebalanced around active mitigation, rather than the passive mitigation model that the Glyph was using.

Spirit cloth is gone in WoD, so that's a moot point. Your idea for a 'flat % active mitigation' is kinda vague, since with Haste or Readiness you could presumably get 100% up time making it essentially passive mitigation - Both Blood and Guardian are being 'fixed' so their active mitigation isn't quite so... passive. What about the secondary ability comparable to Shield Wall or Word of Glory as a resource dump? And why is it a Fury based model, rather than have it's own unique resource like other specs? I really do feel like you're patching over things; especially when you're not actually considering the forthcoming mechanics and itemisation.

[Deleted]

They changed DK roles and they hada horrible experience. Also they recently added guardian spec to druids because they HATED balancing 2 roles within one spec, makes it a nightmare for pvp balance. If demo locks ever get a tanking role it will be due to a 4th spec I reckon.

A ranged dps that can turn into a raid tank when in trouble is a nightmare to balance for pvp.

No idea what they are doing to prot but it just sounds like a lot of added unnecessary work.

[Munemasa]

so having equal baseline stats makes a lock "grotesquely overpowered", admittedly give me 500k sp from vengeance and fury ward would be OP as hell 1.5m shield anybody, which is why it would have to balanced down to around 100% sp over the 10s. which would bring it in line with shield barrier point for point, 250% armor from items brings armor to similar levels, 25% base damage reduction is universal to tanks, tanks get 20% bonus stam as is 6% crit immune

The base rotation in DA there is a drastic reduction in damage output seeing as you lose both of the mastery damage increases, bringing its output into the same range as unvengeanced tanks

as for the new itemization a Shield of the Righteous style attack/active mitigation the same problems would be had by pallies with haste or readiness, so really that argument is moot. I didnt realize that they were removing spirit as a primary so for the dodge/parry building it would have to work off Int.

fury dump you mean like carrion swarm,soul fire or immolation aura.... soul fire could work much like revenge proc molten core to instant cast

um shield wall = Unending Resolve minus the anti-interupt/silence

Reason why lock where OP in MoP beta, DA = Meta+25% damage reduction, Gear not balance around tanking, mastery scaled obscenely well at 85, hence 85 pally soloing lvl 90 raid bosses to be fair though that was a combined lack of foresight from blizz vengeance stacks higher then your health pool

[Jessicka]

You're thinking OP in terms of DPS, I'm talking OP in tanking terms of just taking straight up far less damage than other specs.

Again, Fury dump for mitigation.

You're not even thinking about this in terms of a tanking spec, so can only wonder if you actually play a tank at the moment and understand that it's a role to be attracted to, even more than the aesthetics and themes of being a Warlock.

Edit: Sorry but all these threads go down the same path of "I don't like current tanking classes, but Warlock tanking would be cool because it's Warlocks." Without really accepting that tanks are as they are now because of the role, and that it's commonly the role itself that is what makes the playstyle unappealing because the role itself needs certain necessary mechanics to be functional. Tacking them on or bandaiding existing mechanics within Demonology as a spec is absolutely the wrong way to go about implementing them. And even then, very probably will still have many of the same issues players have with existing tanks; because the problem still lies within tanking as a role for them rather than the spec or class that offers it.

[Munemasa]

i like all the other tanking classes apart from the bear stupid doorod, i like tanking, at 85 with mop greens you could amass like 60% mastery which gave you +40% damage reduction all the time plus the 15 additional to magic damage as soon as you hit 86 however it goes back to around 28% mastery giving you 17% damage reduction that plus the obscene damage they were able to put out and and did i mention it used to be 500% armor from items to.... can you see why it was so damn OP

the beauty of a Lock tank lies in the adaptability if done right different pet for different situation assuming of course soul link(shared health version) is taken into account, enemy hits big voidy disarm, many mob boss, felgaurd extra aoe, ranged boss, imp out and ranged tank, magic debuff hound much down consume magic, all while having cleave heals available

the biggest issue i have with blizz is they just seem to wanna tease those of us who want more tanking options, more tanking mechanics, cause taunt swap at this many stacks = boring, i really enjoyed the dance with Will of the Emperor and the stone Guard swapping, without more variety in the tank toolkit thats pretty much as complicated you can get

[Jessicka]

i like all the other tanking classes apart from the bear stupid doorod, i like tanking, at 85 with mop greens you could amass like 60% mastery which gave you +40% damage reduction all the time plus the 15 additional to magic damage as soon as you hit 86 however it goes back to around 28% mastery giving you 17% damage reduction that plus the obscene damage they were able to put out and and did i mention it used to be 500% armor from items to.... can you see why it was so damn OP

the beauty of a Lock tank lies in the adaptability if done right different pet for different situation assuming of course soul link(shared health version) is taken into account, enemy hits big voidy disarm, many mob boss, felgaurd extra aoe, ranged boss, imp out and ranged tank, magic debuff hound much down consume magic, all while having cleave heals available

the biggest issue i have with blizz is they just seem to wanna tease those of us who want more tanking options, more tanking mechanics, cause taunt swap at this many stacks = boring, i really enjoyed the dance with Will of the Emperor and the stone Guard swapping, without more variety in the tank toolkit thats pretty much as complicated you can get

That's a tanking problem, not a Warlock problem. Warlocks tanking isn't going to fix it either, because if Warlocks can do X and Death Knights, Warriors, Monks, Paladins and Druids can't, then it's not a mechanic they can make use of to make tanking interesting - and it would just make Warlock tanks mandatory if they did.

I don't know what you're looking for, at all. That Warlocks should be tanks because Warlock tanks would be better than other tanks? That's just not how it works.

[threads]

Demo was/is my favorite dps spec so I'd be pretty bummed if it changed to tanking.