Moderators update, AE Tanking, Comics

[Boubouille]

Moderators Recruitment Update
Good news everyone! The recruitment was fairly succesful and most of the applications I received (between 250 and 300, if you want to know) are processed by now. The recruitment is closed for the moment until we figure out who's going to be a moderator and who isn't. Due to the insane amount of applications, I won't be able to reply to everyone and I will just make an announcement in a few days to claim that my forums are now full of love and awesome moderators.

Also note that if you got refused it doesn't necessarily mean that you are awful, a few decent users won't be selected just because they didn't post enough on the forums. Moderators aren't just here to ban people, they're here to keep their forum alive and make it a wonderful place of happiness, people who already had sticky posts on a forum and contributed regularly have 90% chance to become a mod, but the ones who didn't even have an account on the forums and mailed me to become a Global Moderator to ban people probably won't be selected. (Yes, it happened)

I'd like to thank all the members who applied, even if you end up not being selected it's always great to see that some people care!


Warriors issues and tanks AE Tanking

We're much more concerned about tank single target dps than we are tank AE dps. Especially in Icecrown, there are virtually no fights where the tank's dps contribution on an AE fight is really going to amount to much. You can make an argument that the single target dps can be relevant on e.g. Festergut (though again, I still don't think there are that many cases where the difference between success and fail are the tank's dps).

2) You may find Devastate boring, but Devastate is a very easy ability to buff because even small tweaks have large effects given how often it is used. Buffing say Shield Slam (or even Def Stance) would make the PvP balance we're trying to solve even worse. You'd have to buff Revenge enormously to see a difference. Any buff to Heroic Strike affects dps warriors in PvE as well who aren't hurting at all. Some of the ideas about e.g. Rend are interesting, but we're pretty sure the last thing the warrior needs is yet another ability to manage while tanking. Long term that might be the kind of thing we consider, but given that we're looking for a safe and easy buff, that's not the kind of thing we want to mess with now. (Consider that even if we did a PTR, who is going to be on there when the competition is new bosses in Icecrown?)

3) There are differences in how tanks generate AE threat, and therefore damage. Warriors are jealous of the DK and especially paladin persistent area-based damage, and the others are jealous of the warrior's burst AE threat on incoming adds. Druids are jealous of anyone with more than one button.

So, yes, one way of handling this is to give every tank a burst AE attack like Thunderclap, a sustained AE attack like Consecrate, and a mass taunt like Challenging Shout just for good measure. That's the kind of thing we are really reluctant to do though because it just works against the justification for having 4 tanking classes when they all perform the same way including using the same kind of tools. Now, on the other hand no tank should be horribly gimped in any of those situations, and except for rare exceptions they really aren't. We're mostly talking quality of life issues here. (One such exception: DK offtanks on Yogg had trouble picking up adds and the dps couldn't afford to wait. As long as there aren't a ton of fights like this though, we don't think it's a systemic flaw.)

4) Long-term, the paladin manner of generating AE damage and threat is probably too good, especially given how simple it is. To be honest, we have very mixed feelings on the whole AE tanking game. We brought the druid and warrior more in line with the paladin for fear of recreating the Shattered Halls / Mount Hyjal experience, where other tanks just weren't competitive. What that has led to of course is the AE tank + AE style of damage for almost every pull. You need the tools to be able to tank legitimate adds fights (imagine lots of incoming mobs), but does that mean every pull needs to devolve into that? We'd like to see less AE overall, so buffing everyone's AE tools isn't going to be tops on our agenda. That does however mean that we really can't afford to have a "best AE tank", and while things are more fair there than they were in BC, they aren't fair enough.

Sorry for going off topic here, but these kinds of questions have come up a lot lately, so I figured I'd just share some of our discussions publicly.

The MMO Report
Apparently you like the MMO Report and so do I, here is this week's episode!

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Comics
Dark Legacy Comic #222 and Teh Gladiators #110 are out!

[Marvdatboi]

Lol the MMO Report is always funny.

[CyCloneNL]

[blizzquote="Ghostcrawler;http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/22748775349-when-will-the-prot-dps-buff-come.html]Druids are jealous of anyone with more than one button. [/blizzquote"]

Win

[Arthoxxx]

That DLC just made my day

[skittles]

LOL

One of the best DLC's so far!

[LavaDuck]

I giggled when I found out the dude with 50 pets was Ash from Pokemon xD

edit: good luck to all applicants!

[Lysah]

Am I the only person who heard Putricide's voice when they read "Good news everyone!"?

Maybe I should take a break...

[Nirron]

[blizzquote="Ghostcrawler;http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/22748775349-when-will-the-prot-dps-buff-come.html]Druids are jealous of anyone with more than one button. [/blizzquote"]

Made me lol.

Me too

[MushroomBomb]

but the ones who didn't even have an account on the forums and mailed me to become a Global Moderator to ban people probably won't be selected. (Yes, it happened)

I can really just imagine that... :

Druids are jealous of anyone with more than one button.

:-[

[det]

DLC - brilliant as always.

[phai]

I lol'd hard at the DLC
Awesome <3

[BaddyMcBad]

As many others have said, the DLC was hilarious.

[Kriziak]

"paladin manner of generating AE damage and threat is probably too good" - it would be good enough if DPS would have enough brain to wait till consecration make at least one tick on mobs... Usualy I run to pack of mobs (no charge like war, druid) I hit first mob, running to second and 3th mob to gather them and aoe - but dps is start nuking first mob while i run to second...

yesterdays random HC (HoL) dps table:
1. mage 3,6k dps - always nuking one mob from a pack - mostly not my primary target
2. me - pala tank 2,2k dps
3. priest 1,6k dps
4. DK 836 dps
5. shammy healer 200 dps

- for that group my AE tanking threat was low... :-)
(because they never waited, till I gather the mobs and even few times they pulled pack from front or some packs from back - which I skipped)

[Grob]

3) There are differences in how tanks generate AE threat, and therefore damage. Warriors are jealous of the DK and especially paladin persistent area-based damage, and the others are jealous of the warrior's burst AE threat on incoming adds. Druids are jealous of anyone with more than one button.

hahahaha

[Jinna]

On both the RSS feed and here when I try to open the DLC I get the comic with Miji stealing the tricycle. Even by going to previous on the site it appears that 222 and 222a are the same... anyone else got this problem?

[Membrane]

Haha, brilliant DLC. ;D

[emp]

We'd like to see less AE overall, so buffing everyone's AE tools isn't going to be tops on our agenda. That does however mean that we really can't afford to have a "best AE tank", and while things are more fair there than they were in BC, they aren't fair enough.

Does that mean that we can hope in a Cataclysm setting to see more "sophisticated" trash fights in heroics and raids?What i mean is, if they want to see less AE overally, maybe they will decide to return CC in Instances?Well i'd be more than happy to see that but still no one can judge by just a blizzquote.

[Nymrohd]

Anyone else hoping that Cata will kill AE tanking? I think it would be very reasonable if tanks could not reliably hold more than 3 mobs (maybe 4 for paladins so they can keep their niche).

[SalcN]

The DLC was AWESUM

[Kriziak]

Anyone else hoping that Cata will kill AE tanking? I think it would be very reasonable if tanks could not reliably hold more than 3 mobs (maybe 4 for paladins so they can keep their niche).

everytimes when new expansion hits, tanks cant hold more than few mobs in dungs with quest/dung gear. Later when they get gear from raids are dungs again easy.