Should tanks be self sufficient for survivability in raids?

[Krazzorx]

Seemed to be quite the popular topic of discussion in the warrior tank thread that I thought deserved its own topic.

In raids, would you like to see tanks continue to be self sufficient and take care of themselves or require healers to look after even the greatest of tanks?

Personally, I'm torn on this. On the one hand, it makes sense that a tank, whose job it is to be a meat shield, should be in charge of their own success or failure. On the other, it also makes sense that healers to do their job need to heal. And shouldn't they be healing the person taking the most damage too?

[Issalice]

Tanks should be able to take a lot of damage, but there is a point when they need heals. I think that's how it should be, all types of specs (dps, heals, tank) working together and each doing their job.

[klogaroth]

For me the ideal situation is for both tanks and healers to have a say in survivability.

We don't want a situation where tanks have almost nothing to do with if they live, and are kept alive purely through constantly bombing big heals, but we also don't want a situation where tanks are near enough immortal. Neither of those situations is particularly engaging long term.

[The Cheat]

For me the ideal situation is for both tanks and healers to have a say in survivability.

We don't want a situation where tanks have almost nothing to do with if they live, and are kept alive purely through constantly bombing big heals, but we also don't want a situation where tanks are near enough immortal. Neither of those situations is particularly engaging long term.

This is basically what I was leaning towards with my first post in the other thread. It remains to be seen, however, if Blizzard can actually strike this type of balance. In over a decade of WoW design they still haven't seemed to be able to get away from massive pendulum swings in balance when they make major changes.

[Deleted]

Blizzard has proven themselves consistently unable to challenge tanks without making endbosses hit for > 50% of health pools with unmitigated melee swings during Mythic progression. Fights like Blackhand, Brackenspore and Tyrant Velhari where tanks don't really have the tools to deal with this and are almost entirely reliant on CoW spam/externals just to survive basic melee hits are more or less universally reviled because after a certain point whether or not you live or die simply isn't reflective of your skill any more and your ability to do your job is entirely dependent on the ability of other people to not trip over their own dicks.

The solution is to let perfectly played (i.e, the absolute pinnacle of skill, maybe 100 or so players per class world-wide at best) tanks be self-sustainable - particularly because it's not like tanks are the only two people in the raid that healers have to pay attention to. MoP was, by a long shot, the time during which tank gameplay was the most engaging, and it had more or less nothing to do with the fact that Vengeance made absurd DPS possible.

[Deleted]

Personally I think tanks being self sufficient for survival in raids during end of DS-->MOP was one of the greatest mistakes Blizzard has pulled off so far. Tanks are by far taking most damage during an encounter, when you completely kill the need to heal them, healing during that encounter becomes a matter of poping the overpowerful raid cd on a predetermined point and dropping your area of effect heals on the clump. I also think the current status quo (of beacon+ hots+PWS with tanks calling externals being enough) is bad, and also it makes tanks too focused purely on the externals's timers.

I think a solution could be to plummet the tank's passive defenses to the ground as this lowers the damage bosses like Velhari need to do as well. A tank should die really fast without healing. Active mitigation should just avoid mechanic application and should help with healer mana efficiency with the aid of externals(which should have less effect). Your big cds however should allow you to live through any non insta death event.

The solution is to let perfectly played (i.e, the absolute pinnacle of skill, maybe 100 or so players per class world-wide at best) tanks be self-sustainable - particularly because it's not like tanks are the only two people in the raid that healers have to pay attention to. MoP was, by a long shot, the time during which tank gameplay was the most engaging, and it had more or less nothing to do with the fact that Vengeance made absurd DPS possible.

This is a bad solution because you suddenly lose 1 dps slot when you're not self sustainable because you're not top 100. Also you can't tell me you can tune 6 tanking classes so that at all ilvls only 100 or so players of each class can solo heal themselves and the rest cant.
And oh please, Vengence being completely broken was by far the favorite aspect of most tanks in MoP.

[Khiyone]

Personally I think tanks being self sufficient for survival in raids during end of DS-->MOP was one of the greatest mistakes Blizzard has pulled off so far. Tanks are by far taking most damage during an encounter, when you completely kill the need to heal them, healing during that encounter becomes a matter of poping the overpowerful raid cd on a predetermined point and dropping your area of effect heals on the clump.

Simply tone down AoE healing and raid CDs then, and keep tanks mostly self-sufficient. As was said above, it is unpleasant to have the "fundamental" aspect of playing a tank (surviving) primarily out of your hands as was the case with some tanks especially in BRF. If there is to be healer interaction with tank survival, let it be somewhat like it is today with the more self-sufficient tanks - namely you have the ability to prevent spikes and have a good degree of self-sufficiency, while healers just add in the raw healing throughput needed to survive.

There is far too much passive healing on tanks nowadays and too many external CDs available, though, and this should definitely change.

[bicycle]

Who is asking for tanks to have less self reliance? Surely it can't be tanks, since presumably tanks like having some sort of gameplay while they raid. And it cannot be healers, since none of them could possibly want to return to the days of having an assigned tank healer who did fuckall besides cast greater heal on the tank with aggro.

It must be DPS asking for this. So, why do you rogues and mages and hunters want to nerf tanks so badly? And do those of you voting yes do any kind of serious content or are you just seeing geared tanks pretty much soloing 5man dungeons and that hurts your feelings?

[Schattenlied]

No, tanks should not be self sufficient... It's the tank's job to use their abilities right to make the incoming damage reasonably heal-able, not to not need a healer.

[Scathan]

Tanks shouldn't be self sufficient, but healers shouldn't have to worry about situations where it's heal the tank, or heal a dps (unless something has gone wrong in the encounter). Tank cooldowns shouldn't prevent them from dying so much as slow down how fast they die. To give the healers the much needed resource of time to think about where their heals are most needed.

[Taurous]

Tanks should have the responsibility to survive deadly attacks, and healers should have the responsibility of keeping them alive during less deadly attacks. If that makes any sense.

[Nnyco]

While we at it, lets give healers 500% increased mana cost and make dps give em mana

right now is fine as it is, it was worse in mop where a tank basicly just stood in the corner and waited for the encounter to end because they had literally no interaction with anyone else

[Spiral Mage]

The tank and healer have that intertwined relationship. Both need each other to matter. That said, though. I think giving tanks a fair share of "oshit buttons" so they CAN SURVIVE on their own for a little bit because either the Healers aren't paying attention for whatever reason .. or maybe it's the final 15% of the boss, or so, Heroism has been blown .. healer DCs and the tank uses all his fucking shit to survive to the bitter end and save the day.

I think having emergency cooldowns or survival for a decent window of time, is good. But tanks need healers and healers need tanks. It'd be broken if the tank could entirely survive on his own.

Also, WoW needs a better form of active mitigation. The tank should be able to minimize damage done to him, through his own decision making throughout the entire fight, not just very brief windows of it. There should be a difference between a skilled tank and an unskilled one, and while there absolutely is .. I mean, in their personal decision making.

I think bosses need more abilities you can counter with things like Shield Block and Blood Shield, etc. Putting more control of survival into the hands of the tank to minimize or negate the really "OMG OW!" kinda blows ..

[l33t]

Seemed to be quite the popular topic of discussion in the warrior tank thread that I thought deserved its own topic.

In raids, would you like to see tanks continue to be self sufficient and take care of themselves or require healers to look after even the greatest of tanks?

Personally, I'm torn on this. On the one hand, it makes sense that a tank, whose job it is to be a meat shield, should be in charge of their own success or failure. On the other, it also makes sense that healers to do their job need to heal. And shouldn't they be healing the person taking the most damage too?

No. IMO, tanks who are self healing are simply stealing healer's job. Self healing should be seriously nerfed.

Absorbs tho, is a completely other topic. Absorbs are OK.

[Spiral Mage]

As per what I said, I think self-healing should perhaps be a window ability. Like

For the next X period of time, you massively heal yourself ..

kinda deal. So yeah he can but only for 1 minute, or something, and then he can choose his time to be a champion and he will still need you the rest of the time. But his own self healing may save the day in a critical moment.

[clevin]

Tanks should have the responsibility to survive deadly attacks, and healers should have the responsibility of keeping them alive during less deadly attacks. If that makes any sense.

This is kind of where I am. I've not tanked but have raid-healed and it's annoying to have nothing to do with the tank's survivability and too stressful to have to be spamming heals nonstop or the tank eats dirt. What I'd to see is some variety in how this is done. For example, if the boss casts a hard hitting ability that's channeled (think Plasma Blast from Mimiron back in Ulduar), then the tank should be able to mitigate that and perhaps a healer has to pop a CD to help the tank survive. Other than that, the tank should have strong self-heals/mitigation abilities that make him able to handle most other damage but which, if not used or misused, require high healing. If used, the healer should have to heal a tank, but should not have to do so constantly.

[Nnyco]

one major problem people dont see in this thread is that we are at the end of the expansion right now and every tank is overgeared and basicly takes zero damage and so their self healer is mostly enough, thats why warrior is also "bad" right now, because they dont heal themself and still only mitigate

blame the too long patch if anythin

[Nyoken]

yea they should definitely be self-aware. Don't dumb the gameplay down for them. They are tanks so they should be able to mitigate a lot more dmg than anyone else, but at some point they are gonna need help from the healers.

[Pennoyer]

No. IMO, tanks who are self healing are simply stealing healer's job. Self healing should be seriously nerfed.

Absorbs tho, is a completely other topic. Absorbs are OK.

*Self-healing steals a pally's job.

Right now, tank healing is already dominated by holy paladin and, to a lesser extent, priest. Making tanks self-sufficient gets rid of the crap design where you almost always need a paladin in most raid comps because it's supposed to be the 'tank healer' and, of course, keeping tanks alive is the most important thing in a raid.

Make tanks self sufficient and increase raid damage. I'd be willing to see auto-win CDs like Tranq go or get heavily nerfed to make this happen. Healing will get much more diverse and interesting.

[Deleted]

one major problem people dont see in this thread is that we are at the end of the expansion right now and every tank is overgeared and basicly takes zero damage and so their self healer is mostly enough, thats why warrior is also "bad" right now, because they dont heal themself and still only mitigate

blame the too long patch if anythin

Do you even play a tank ?
Back when we were starting highmaul normal/heroic, as a prot pally, my self healing was always higher than all the other healers combined (healing on me that is).
200k WoGs on butcher, no problem, sacred shiels up to 50k, no problem.
And that when i barely had any gear.

Now with the set bonuses, i dont even need to use wogs, av. shield spam and absorbs for days.

Only one to blame ia blizz for giving tanks dumb heals, and dont get me startedon the set bonuses.