Tanking changes between WoD & Legion - or why prot feel bad about nerfs

[Deleted]

Hi, I am Jim, I've cleaned everything C'thun pre-nerf to xavius mm server first with 1 healer, git gud MM EN is for nubz

Just kidding, I'll pass on my e-peen's CV.

More seriously, I've been playing (& raiding) since vanilla, cataclysm & mists aside.

The first thing that shocked me, getting back to wow on WoD, was the shift of "role" for tanks. Surely, good tanks didn't have any problem with aggro & were already focusing on survival. Blizzard completely deleted aggro tables, idk why I'm still having omen when a miserable thunderclap & aggro-colored nameplates do 10000% of the job

Good switch I believe, now tanks can focus on what's really important: surviving, saving the raid, perfect execution of strats, and DPS. Not crunching stupid numbers to get aggro in a silly system.

Whether U think I'm right or wrong, one undeniable (spelling?) change occured: playing war prot & hpriest in WoD, I felt we didn't need healers. We were healed like any party member, we took even less damage. Good knowledge of fights let to good CD rotation which led to autonomous tanks dying 20 sec after the whole raid died.
For the vast majority of PUGs & more generally wow players, a tank that had to be healed too much was simply a bad tank. Even if it's bad design, I liked it cause I felt even more important, and I believe I'm not alone since we tanks have a this tendancy to feel more important than others - this design just fed that feel.

Now, with Legion, Blizzard announced that would be the end of it - we'll have to get healed by healers. This change was welcomed by players for obvious reasons, good or bad. So every tank felt this change immediately when Legion got out.

Every tank, except our good old prot warrior. For a long time we weren't the best tanks. With legion xpac, we were the only tanks that weren't affected by this switch of meta. For 1 month, we were still on top of the world, even if we were rage-starved (bad design also), we were like in WoD: no need to be healed. Whereas monks felt this change real hard.

Now with last nerfs, we became a normal class. What's important isn't the fact that we're not the best tanks atm, or numbers, or that we got hurt by the stupid blizz-hammer. What's important - our meta was changed, after this sweet taste of invulnerability went on for 2 weeks of raiding (that's a lot). We still got the stupidest rotation ever with 2 buttons on gcd & 4 poor weakauras to look at.

So, how does it goes when u hit the hammer so hard on a tank - making him a subpar class or keeping him a top class, doesn't matter - ? Well in PUGs you have stupid healers that don't read patchnotes, stupid leaders that count on the fotm believing we're still in vanilla molten core. In organized groups you have healers whining because their favorite tank-guildie-friend (no sarcasm) is tougher to heal. Big Headed tanks (95% of us lmao) took a big hit psychologically - we're not a one-man-army anymore. And when u got noobs in normal dungeons that tell other noobs they'll fail in heroic, well you know WoW is a real diku-rush to the best performance, from max lvl noobies to world firsts. Every other class felt the meta change (maybe not guardians drood, idk about them). The fact that we got this massive change 1 month after gave us a good reason to be angry.

In a perfect world, everything would be normal, nobody would react so harshly. But the vast majority of players aren't in your Perfect Guild with Good Friends, these Good Friends might not reason stoïcally like The Fabolous Community Of MMO-Champion, and the vast majority of PUGs are mean & stupid - getting back to their good-hearted never-say-no personnalities as soon as they close the game. Don't forget that tanks are also human, with emotions, feeling-driven thoughts, and a psychology. Think about it: 1 week ago we needed as much healing as the 5 or 7th player in the raid, now we have healers dedicated to us. That hurts our misplaced pride, and guildies remarks about this shift hurts even more.


Personnally, I hate this nerf. But I believe that this nerf hits more psychologically than in numbers. I believe that taking back what u gave so brutally is a bad design in video games. I also believe that blizzard had 8 (!!!) f-ing months to fix ignore pain. I might sound like a teletubbies, but I believe everybody in this forum is right: we're back to normal, this nerf is good, but also really bad. Blizzard tried to solve the problem, but it didn't really work - we're still awkward, we're still hitting 2 buttons, we're still crying for a 3rd button that affects our GCD rotation (revenge), and now we're missing these good old days when we could soak everything & keep going even after the whole raid died.


What surprises me, is that 12 years after wow got out, Blizzard still hits with hammer like noob. It's really surprising to see that they still make this kind of mistakes that affects players psychologically - they had 12 years of brainstormings, tests, patches, design documents... to avoid these kind of mistakes. They created a diku perfect for balancing classes, have been experimenting in this field for 12 years (if not WAY more with DIKU-mud)


Sorry for my poor english. TL; DR: this nerf affect us more psychologically than really - blizzard hit the hammer at the wrong time & Legion officially got out for warriors yesterday on EU servers. Before we were still playing old-wod tanking that didn't need healing.

[potis]

Despite the fact in your whole post you mention how broken we were, you fail to accept the change.

100% case of "I dont care about the game, just make my e-peen larger than the other person".

This is why Blizzard should always ignore pretty much everyone that isnt Top 5 in raiding or PvP.

Psychological hit what? How long are you playing this game, 2 months?

Every expansion is exactly the same shit, since FOREVER, every single expansion for the Warrior class, FROM TBC TO LEGION, NOTHING EVER CHANGES.

Arms is OP first month cause they fuck up numbers, they nerf numbers, Arms is balanced/subpar , suddenly Arms is MEGA UBER BROKEN 6-10 months after cause +40 item levels.

Tanks arent every different, they fuck up the balane between tanks each god damn expansion, this time it was the Warrior being OP for a month instead of Druid or DK.

Where you crying about Psychological hit when dudu's got nerfed to the ground 3 expansions back?

Did you cry 2 months before when dudu's got their mastery nerfed so they wouldnt have +1m HP than you do, along with more mitigation, making your existence useless and "ROFL IGNORE PAIN? 80% REDUCTION AND 5MIL HP BRO".

Your whole post is a sack of shit, learn to adapt.

[Deleted]

Despite the fact in your whole post you mention how broken we were, you fail to accept the change.

Try reading posts, it helps answering them.