Swipe - Nerfed TOO hard?

[Richmond]

I'm having the same problem at 80, my swipe used to crit for 5k ish, now it crits for a meesly 1500 ish and next to no threat. What people also seem to forget is that T10 2 pc provides 20% increased damage to swipe, so as soon as you take that off, all these numbers your seeing at the moment will be even less!

Druid tanks have been hit big time with the nerf stick, its gona take us months to recover from these nerfs, until at least the top tanks are at 85 and are complaining loudly on the official forums

[exochaft]

Honestly, I just faction changed my Druid to Horde Side to become a Troll after not touching him for a good 6 months (Went completely Horde but dislike playing Tauren :P) right after 4.0.3a went live, and it took my all of one dungeon to level out what I needed to do to AoE tank now that swipe was ineffective. Lace the swipes in, tab lacerate to get the bleed up on everyone (At least until we get our AoE-bleed for tanking), hit everything with a little bit of damage but keep the focus on your main target with mauls/mangles. The rule comes down to this: If you can hold threat on it all, then it's not an AoE pack, and people could get hurt if they rip off of you (Not so much true other than MAYBE H-HoR, but much moreso in Cata). If you can't keep AoE threat on everything, then chances are they'll all be dead before you could get a bleed up on them anyway.

The basic premise, moving into Cata, is that pulls are going to revert to being single-target + CC, so in light of perfect CC, any extra mobs should get some Lacerates up on them so build residual threat while you beat the crap out of your main target. Right now there isn't a lot of time for this, but hey, there's not a lot of threat either.

As far as raids go, that's where your players have to be smarter about watching their threat. It feels just like the good old days when I used to tank SSC/TK... Ahh..

And as a final note... I have never had a healer pull off of me o.O What the heck are you doin', man? :P

The actual model for AoE threat for cata is tanks shouldn't have an issue keeping AoE threat. It's designed so that if everyone is AoEing, the tank can use AoE threat moves and not have to micro-manage every mob because the AoE from the DPS is so strong that mobs start flying everywhere... of course, that doesn't stop most tanks from micromanaging mobs. The actual deterrent for convincing a group to not AoE tank is the sheer amount of damage the tank and/or the group will take if you don't CC, AoE threat is a completely separate issue.

Now we can all say "everything's balanced at 85, so anything below that level doesn't matter." True, to a point. As most people have noticed, there's been quite a few changes to sub-60 abilities of certain classes... sure, they balance out at 85, but if something is broken, it does warrant being fixed. While Thrash does help out immensely once you get it at 81, it's the combination of Swipe + Thrash that should provide enough AoE threat that the DPSers can do pure AoE and not be concerned about pulling half the mobs.

Depending on the healer, they can pull mobs easily. Classic example is a healer front-loading heals or going all-out before the tank makes contact with everything... nothing should be so dire that the tank needs heals the second they enter combat, yet many healers still think they do. Sometimes groups don't all magically group up together so the druid tank can Swipe them all at the same time, especially a mix of melee/ranged mobs. The not-so-classic example is the healers contributing to the DPS but not realizing the duties of a DPSer... focus what the tank's focusing.

*edit* - should also mention that if you think Swipe is fine as is and will be balanced with Thrash... the entire point of AoE threat not being a huge issue is so that the tank CAN do something else other than our pre-Cata Swipe spamming and having little/no ability to generate single-target threat.

[Dangerjoe]

since we are they only class that gets our second aoe move at lvl 81, i dont think its blizzards intention we tank before... they are prolly trying to force more healers in low lvls

warriors get their second aoe move at 31 point talent, so i wouldnt take that class either if you enjoy low lvl tanking

TL;DR druids will be fine at lvl 81 when u get Trash AoE

[calinass]

I want to reply saying that they made a typo in the programming.

Atleast, that is what is said on the wow forums by a poster.
I am hitting at 68 what I hit at 36 when I got swipe.
Makes AoE tanking....fun ;].

Not WaI.

---------- Post added 2010-11-28 at 03:32 AM ----------

since we are they only class that gets our second aoe move at lvl 81, i dont think its blizzards intention we tank before... they are prolly trying to force more healers in low lvls

warriors get their second aoe move at 31 point talent, so i wouldnt take that class either if you enjoy low lvl tanking

TL;DR druids will be fine at lvl 81 when u get Trash AoE

Inquisition for paladins
Not entirely a new aoe threat move.....but it is definitely for aoe. :]

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

I dont enjoy bear tank anymore, it feels slow and clumsy.

Its a perfectly viable spec that holds aggro well, it just was not redesigned with fun in mind, more like they set out to dismantle swipe tanking and ended screwing up the flow of feral tanking something fierce.

[breath]

I should really begin to skip all these post screaming nerf or similar.

Damage isn't what you are supposed to do, you should (tanking bears) keep mob on yourself and mitigate damage.
Now, as for experience, I have almost never encountered a beartank not able to keep aggro on AoE packs.
The whole point is this.

So if in most cases ppl are able to do it and in few cases beartanks weren't able to do keep aggro, imho it was cause of their inability to play the class correctly.

There is no such thing as nerf without the purpose of balancing classes out.

[Mega]

I should really begin to skip all these post screaming nerf or similar.

Damage isn't what you are supposed to do, you should (tanking bears) keep mob on yourself and mitigate damage.
Now, as for experience, I have almost never encountered a beartank not able to keep aggro on AoE packs.
The whole point is this.

So if in most cases ppl are able to do it and in few cases beartanks weren't able to do keep aggro, imho it was cause of their inability to play the class correctly.

There is no such thing as nerf without the purpose of balancing classes out.

You Sir, don't make sense at all, we all know that better skills make you a better tank but that's not a case in tanking several mobs using swipe ability. Now let me you, as we all are saying that swipe is currently hitting for about 550-600 noncritical and about 1000-1100 critical hit with a 6 second cool down and if your dps is like warrior, mage or boomkin there is no way in the hell you can hold threat on all the mobs with your tiny bit dps of swipe,

[burnface]

I haven't had any problems tanking with my druid. Sure the change to swipe from the 6 second CD to the nerf in damage is a bummer but it's all part of adapting. I believe someone said earlier treat swipe like thunderclap and single-target AoE to keep threat up. I find it much more interesting than just spamming 2-3 buttons . Anyway, best of luck to all you druid tanks.

[Schlock]

I should really begin to skip all these post screaming nerf or similar.

Damage isn't what you are supposed to do, you should (tanking bears) keep mob on yourself and mitigate damage.
Now, as for experience, I have almost never encountered a beartank not able to keep aggro on AoE packs.
The whole point is this.

So if in most cases ppl are able to do it and in few cases beartanks weren't able to do keep aggro, imho it was cause of their inability to play the class correctly.

There is no such thing as nerf without the purpose of balancing classes out.

There is when there's a bug. The point people are making, if you'd read, is not that it's nerfed, but it was nerfed far beyond what was intended and is stuck at it's level 36 damage.

[shadowkras]

Your healers need to L2P and watch their damn threat. Kidding.

But if what you said is true, and Blizzard's idea that healers getting aggro while AoE tanking is not what they had in mind, then this nerf maybe was overdone. Or a wake-up call to change tanking routines as Bear.

hitting for about 550-600 noncritical and about 1000-1100 critical hit with a 6 second cool down

Happens all the time on warriors if you dont spec on blood&thunder and pull big groups, anything that wasnt hit by cleave/revenge/shieldslam will get pulled by small heals, B&T seems to double the thunderclap damage.
I have a warrior full 264 and a druid full 251, swipe is hitting just a little harder than my thunderclap, about 50-150 damage more, both at 0 vengeance. The problem with druid's aoe should get better once they get thrash at lv81.

Paladins and DKs still have a huge lead on aoe tanking, specially paladins, their spammable aoe is on a shorter CD (4.5s), hits for over double the amount of the other tanks AoE and can refresh their ranged 3target attack.
But druids have nothing like shockwave, death&decay or consecration.

Damage isn't what you are supposed to do, you should (tanking bears) keep mob on yourself and mitigate damage.

Sir, the 2 bolded parts are exactly the same thing, damage=threat=keep things on you, less damage = less threat. They removed all "increased threat" abilities from the game, so its all dependant on damage and taunts now.

[Vook]

Damage isn't what you are supposed to do, you should (tanking bears) keep mob on yourself and mitigate damage.
Now, as for experience, I have almost never encountered a beartank not able to keep aggro on AoE packs.
The whole point is this.

So if in most cases ppl are able to do it and in few cases beartanks weren't able to do keep aggro, imho it was cause of their inability to play the class correctly.

So....basically, you're saying "QQ L2P NOOB" with a long post? Nice. Have you encountered any low level bear tanks after 4.0.3a? Swipe is nerfed to shit, and that's their only AoE threat until level 81. Lacerate at 66 helps slightly, being able to tab-Lacerate and then Swipe.

Damage isn't what you are supposed to do, you should (tanking bears) keep mob on yourself and mitigate damage.

And it's hard to keep multiple mobs on myself when my damage is so low that the slightest AoE attack from a DPS pulls all the mobs off of me.

[scorch109]

Um you must've done your number run before one of the damage nerfs to swipe even geared tclap hits for almost double swipe. a 264/277 warriors tclap hits for ~1300

[Koumaru]

I should really begin to skip all these post screaming nerf or similar.

Yes, please do. Leave the reading and posting to the folks who know wtf they're talking about. Fewer completely irrelevant "L2P NOOBS" sound bites will make it easier for the rest of us to discuss the actual issue(s).

[Deleted]

I decided to queue Hcs on my tank drood to get some rep for the goblin trike. It was going rather fine for a while, sometimes I have to play yoyo with the mobs because I screw up the pull a bit, but nothing that the average healer wont be able to handle... Then I entered this HoS where all the mobs in the first room mysteriously seemed to run towards me. I soon realized the freaking healer was pulling everything in sight (aren't those dudes sposed to be tanks best friends?). I asked politely that he stopped ninja pulling... to what he replied "then stop slacking" .

No... just no... maybe before 4.0.3 I would have been fine facepulling every goddam mob in the instance if the healer was up to the challenge, but now with how shit swipe is theres no way i'll work my ass off tab targeting a dozen mobs and hitting keys on my keyboard like frickin mozart so the run takes a couple minutes less to complete.

I rageleft the group... I never do that... patch 4.0.3 has made me an angry bear.

[AetherMcLoud]

My Swipe CRITS for ~950 (no t10, ~5300 gs)

In AOE situations when I mangle a mob at least I know I will get aggro, with swipe I won't even get aggro from one mob not even to think of aggroing more than one...

[bavarcarus]

there was a thread going about this http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/796582-Swipe-broken
It's mostly back and forth about 'thrash fixes it' though. There's more of the same in the blizzard tank forum http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1118281948

[pavl]

Well every class has gotten a bit of a "nerf" recently.

I'm guessing that it's working fine at 85 :>

But what about at other levels?
I'm leveling feral and was able to tank fine, with the latest nerf swipe even if I can get two off before aoe starts they only hit for about 185 at lvl 70 and I lose aggro way too quickly.

[Minky]

Are you testing on the 85 boss dummy?

[AetherMcLoud]

I was "testing" in heroic 5 mans. My druid is an alt, so no t10 and a mix of icc10 man and 245/232 gear. Swipe hits for 400-500 and crits for 900-1000. Ridiculously low for being our only aoe before Thrash and on a 6 seconds cooldown.

[Mephestos]

I just hit 36 on my troll druid and was super excited to get my swipe! When i saw it hit for 35 compared to auto-attack hit for 150, well lets just say I was glad I knew how to tab and had 2 single-target abilities! The nerf does suck but as previously stated it works as intended just as thunderclap does, and I am still glad i finally have an aoe!