Ask The Devs #9 - Tanking

[crsh1976]

Oooh they just threw a new carrot at us! New legendary in 4.3!

/snore

[Deleted]

And you don't need 50 runic power to use it (the same resource you do use for some CDs, Rune Recharge, etc...), making Druid Rez way more reliable for an "ask'n'get it" right out.

Wouldn't really say it's a "ask'n'get" situation, you will need to ask if there are any healing cds ready for you to pop out of bear to cast and wait for a reply, then time it so it won't be at a particularly bad time.

[Gahgoots]

Q: Is there any chance that we can see damage reduction numbers being used in the statistic UI, just like shield absorb amount of Discipline priest? – 首領先生 (TW)

A: The default UI should show the damage reduction from armor against a creature of equal level. We’ll look into also showing the damage reduction against a +1, +2, +3/boss-level mob, like we do for hit or expertise. Beyond that, there is typically passive damage reduction from talents/stance/presence/etc., which should be relatively easy to combine with armor to find your damage reduction.


Q: Have you ever considered adjusting DPS HP? Seems that while their large pools of health help them on "accidental" situations, a fair portion of the time they can take aggro and tank adds without consequence. – Jainel (LA)

A: We’re generally happy with how well DPS are able to tank (which is to say, not very well). We like that they can take a hit or two (depending upon content) before dying, and that the penalty for that happening is a huge drain on healer mana.


Q: As far as I remember, about five tanks were required in a 25-man group in Burning Crusade. However, the number of tanks in raids has been decreased to one or two since WotLK. I think this is one of the reasons heroic parties suffer from lack of tanks. What if raids have required more tanks? – **한니발 (KR)


REALLY?? So people voted to have these questions answered?? Ugh

[Tommy2er]

Just another Ask the Devs that makes me sigh.

[Vetali]

Q: Vengeance is a great tool to help raid tanks hold aggro over DPS, but in 5-man heroics it doesn't stack high enough to keep up with the threat generated by overgeared DPS burst damage. Are there any plans to address this? Are there any plans to help warriors put out more initial threat before Vengeance has been ramped up? – Nikelsndimes (NA), Cémanana (EU-FR), Arthur (TW), Mancake (NA), Migol (NA)

This was actually a question I really wanted to see answered, not dodged by blizz. On my 359 geared warrior tank its hard to get past 30% vengeance on a given boss fight in a heroic. Having equally geared DPS makes it even worse.

Sigh.

[Sumatran]

Massive letdown, as someone who mains a DK tank with a paladin tank alt, I am heartbroken.

PS We waited two weeks for this?!

Protadin main, bear alt. Also heartbroken.

What a fucking waste of questions.

[Deleted]

Whats next?

[PetersenIII]

Q:Are there any plans to update the leg armor in 4.2 now that the plate tanks receive no dodge from agility? Maybe introduce a new leg armor patch that adds str/stamina, or a mastery/stamina? – Dariok (NA), Fredik (EU-ES)

A: We did. As you’ve probably seen by now, it’s called Drakehide Leg Armor, and it provides Stamina and dodge rating.


Q: Can you make it so that taunt doesn't miss, just like you did for interrupt abilities? Doesn't feel as though it would be a complete upset to overall balance. – Madmartygan (LA)

A: Yes, absolutely! And in fact we did it back in patch 3.9. Tank classes’ taunts have been unable to miss since then. We recognize that tanks will nearly always choose mitigation stats over threat stats and it’s particularly frustrating to have to reach a hit cap just to make sure taunts or interrupts don’t miss, which is why we no longer require that.

It sickens me that these two questions, not only were asked, but that they got sufficient votes to merit answering.

[Sparky_b]

Yeah, I don't think like half of you even realize that it's your PEER that voted up these questions. Blizzard has stated time after time that these questions were asked the most frequently and voted the highest, by the community, worldwide at that.

You think they're dodging questions, but ever since the first ATD people have done their own research on the questions asked and like votes given to questions, all of them came up with the same results as the ATD questions that were answered. You don't like the question, sucks to be you, because most of us didn't care about your question enough to vote it up, if you even asked one to begin with. Complaining about the questions and answers is futile.

[Gahgoots]

It sickens me that these two questions, not only were asked, but that they got sufficient votes to merit answering.

I agree. This is something that's already been publicized, and sad that it wasted two questions.

---------- Post added 2011-06-08 at 04:42 PM ----------

Yeah, I don't think like half of you even realize that it's your PEER that voted up these questions. Blizzard has stated time after time that these questions were asked the most frequently and voted the highest, by the community, worldwide at that.

You think they're dodging questions, but ever since the first ATD people have done their own research on the questions asked and like votes given to questions, all of them came up with the same results as the ATD questions that were answered. You don't like the question, sucks to be you, because most of us didn't care about your question enough to vote it up, if you even asked one to begin with. Complaining about the questions and answers is futile.

We all realize this, silly rabbit. You honestly believe that Blizz doesn't chery-pick the questions? And counting the votes must be accurate, even though it's all controlled by Blizz....

[Sparky_b]

This isn't the first ATD, this is the 9th, the amount of times Blizzard has cherry picked any of their questions has been zero. This is all public forums we're talking about, so anybody can do the math and count votes themselves should they wish, and has been done several times by different studies, all of them coming to the same conclusion Blizzard already had, those in fact were the most voted and asked questions.

You can put your tinfoil hats and conspiracy theories away.

[Gahgoots]

This isn't the first ATD, this is the 9th, the amount of times Blizzard has cherry picked any of their questions has been zero. This is all public forums we're talking about, so anybody can do the math and count votes themselves should they wish, and has been done several times by different studies, all of them coming to the same conclusion Blizzard already had, those in fact were the most voted and asked questions.

You can put your tinfoil hats and conspiracy theories away.

Keep drinking the Blizz Kool-Aid...

I mean, no one would ever fix votes either, right? (Bush, FL, election, President, *cough*)

[Matik]

(Bush, FL, election, President, *cough*)

An independent group actually did a recount a couple of years after the election and found that Bush won in FL after all by a sizable margin, so perhaps do some research before spouting random things out

[Gahgoots]

An independent group actually did a recount a couple of years after the election and found that Bush won in FL after all by a sizable margin, so perhaps do some research before spouting random things out

No such thing as an "independent" group....don't be so naive.

[Lotharfox]

I'm a healer and I'd rather they penalized the healers than having people die which likely penalizes the whole group. However, they could certainly have standing in stuff also penalize personal dps, not only do you take damage but it locks your action buttons for 10 seconds, dps would probably get a lot better at staying outta stuff very quickly.

That's is the greatest idea I have ever heard! Of course, if you want to strike down a DPS, you lower their damage, not their health. When their numbers are lower, everyone's going to get at them for messing up. When they die, they just blame tank/heals. Brilliant!

[Matik]

No such thing as an "independent" group....don't be so naive.

"The media reported the results of the study during the week after November 12, 2001. The results of the study showed that had the limited county by county recounts requested by the Gore team been completed, Bush would still have been the winner of the election"

Wikipedia...

[Gahgoots]

"The media reported the results of the study during the week after November 12, 2001. The results of the study showed that had the limited county by county recounts requested by the Gore team been completed, Bush would still have been the winner of the election"

Wikipedia...

I think Jesse "The Body" Ventura should give you a call and discuss.

[huldu]

Blizzard clearly do not use the LFD when leveling. Many tanks are struggling with threat in pulls of more than 2 monsters. The only way they *aren't* struggling is if they are overgeared, mostly through heirlooms. However tanks beside DK/Paladin will start to "struggle" with AE threat at 70+. This is mainly due the insane damage AE classes are starting to dish out. Especially warriors have a problem with the burst damage. The abilities just do not give enough threat the first 5-6 seconds of the fight. Who cares about raids? They work fine most of the time. It's the 5-man dungeons that are problems with tanks.

The answers blizzard supplies to many of the topics were laughable. Seriously, did they even read what they wrote. The guy asked about 5-man dungeons and blizzard went on about raids. What a joke. Screw your shitty raids, i'm amazed you even consider that trash "raids". Hell, what surprise me even more is that you don't let people random raids across servers yet. 10 people... raid... serious roflcopter on that.

<edit> Blizzard i hope you are aware that WoW will crash and burn the second something decent comes along? It'll be just like back in the days when WoW came around and all the rest just crumbled underneath. Now you are running that "shitty" mmo that people are tired of.

[Sparky_b]

Just because you're too lazy to check the votes yourself, you would have no idea. But just to play Devil's Advocate, I'll play along.

No way on this Earth is there a huge team sitting at the ready just to translate the Korean portion of these questions, let alone the entire gambit of other foreign languages just to pick out the questions they feel like answering. Many of the questions you see answered are things they're still working on or don't see a future for, but of course nobody really points those out when they complain about the questions, they just don't like the answers that pertain to themselves or their immediate surroundings. That's the whole "Nerf scissors, rock is fine, signed paper" thing. You don't like the questions or you think the questions are fixed because you got some news you don't want to hear.

[Deleted]

My money's on legendary tank trinket tbh. It's pretty much the only consistent gear slot used by all 4 tanks that wouldn't need 3 or more different forms of the item and/or couldn't be used by DPS to great effect.

A invisible legendary , not going to happen imo.
if they want to do an other slot it would be a cloack imo , give it stam and dodge , no str or agi but armor or perhaps some (base) vengeance to start with or something to cover the loss of a threat stat and a ofc awesome tanking proc thing.
Voila, a visible tanking legendary they can make all pretty and it's useable by any tank.