Dev Watercooler -- Threat Level Midnight

[lvlark]

[druid tank speaking here] So us tanks get about two thirds more threat? I've been tanking Zuls recently with dps outgearing me quite some, and I had to struggle for threat, but I liked it. It made me proud that I could do whatever the fight asked of me AND push out enough threat to keep aggro, even though it was the first time I went into Zuls. Plus it makes sense you know? I'm the tank, but that guy over there shooting fire and ice at you is much more dangerous in actual fact.. Yet since I'm a big scary bear and also hitting you (like a truck instead of like a train) you're still attacking me. I think this story can get away with this current factor three, but with a factor five? Don't think so. So Blizzard better give us something back for it. Luckily, it looks as though they are going to do that, with survivability becoming more active instead of just passively stacking stats. I'm hoping they'll do this right. And if they do it right, they're gonna give us something back in terms of gearing. Right now it feels pretty boring to me. Hey look I got an upgrade! Gem Agi/Sta, reforge anything that isn't crit or mastery to dodge. That's pretty much stat-stacking to me. What Greg Street is hinting at (you'll need hit/exp/crit/perhaps even haste for generating resources which you'll then use for your surviving abilities) sounds appealing to me. Unfortunately for us tanks, they're first taking something away from us, and in 'a later patch' giving us something back. From the viewpoint of my hunter though, rejoice. Worrying about threat all that much when you're DPSing, while it might sound logical, feels stupid.

[Coldrage]

Now if only they could fix the whiney, doomsayer, cynical, self-righteous, selfish, annoying, ignorant, anti-social "community" !

[jayremy]

Why do I think this change is an Amazing Idea?

Well for months, maybe treading years now I have been talking about this, so many times in pasts posts; so here is the reasoning:

-Tanks don't worry about threat, why should they? A stupid simple transparent number that you obligatorily have to keep track off isn't fun. -What is fun for tanks then? Panning to see how the field of play is going for party members, pick up loose adds, focusing more on when to use mitigation spells (they are tanks, their job is to MITIGATE damage) because a great tank will tank minimal damage using his skill, not stats. Also if surviving isn't an issue worry just then about unloading and positioning.

-Shifting the focus from threat being the challenge of tanking to mitigation being the main challenge seems way more appropriate for a role that is put in place to TAKE LESS damage than other players/roles in the groups. Instead of trying to perfect (sometimes illogical) rotations for threat (blood and thunder for warriors comes to mind), rotations can be made to be about mitigating large portions of damage.


Ideally with random numbers and assumptions off my head thrown in I would so a skilled and good tank, that knows the best way to mitigate appropriately and skillfully, will probably mitigate 10-25% more damage than a typical tank. I hope for more of an impact than just 10-25% but I think more tweaking to base tank mitigation and all end game content might need to be made to match it unfortunately.

[nuttan]

intresting.

[Darkley]

I have to say, firelands as it is, is boring as HELL as a tank, most if no all fights make me wans to /wrist and now you are giving me more threat so i need to do less... you SERIOUSLY need to get your heads on right because this is just what might make me stop tanking, with firelands, i might aswell just go in, aotu hit the boss, come back 10 mins later and ask "did we kill the boss?" If any paladin tank has threat issues, it it his/her damn fault, not how threat works now, stop fecking us over, ur making it more and more boring to tank, take way the extra threat and let us have something to actually du like BUILD THREAT.... Have not said this before but, Blizzard, your idea makers, are RETARDS, fire the dumb fucks and stop making this game a joke. On both 10 and 25 man i can keep agro on everything without this, so get it reverted, your just being idiots doing this. Feck no if i want free threat, i want atleast threat to be a challenge but now... nope... why be a tank then, nothing for us to do anymore other than click a CD here and there... If you cant focus on both mitigation and threat as a tank, stop being a tank, it means YOU SUCK DONKEY BALLS! Tanking is easier than ever.

[huldu]

It's only in 5-man random dungeons that threat is/can be a problem. Especially during leveling process. It just makes it tedious to tank since DPS don't pay attention to anything. This could be a step in the right direction, it's hard to tell. The best case scenario is that tanking becomes enjoyable and that we'll see the impact on the queue time.

[chuck123]

You're acting like it was hard to begin with. While threat has never really been an issue before, I'm afraid now it will just be faceroll. Maybe Blizzard doesn't get why people like tanking to begin with. It's more of a challenge than dps. Making it even easier is not the right way to recruit more tanks.

Maybe for you tanking is more of a challenge, for others out there it ain't (matter of pov)

[Ausr]

Looks interesting. Hopefully it'll allow more people to go "Oh tanking got a little easier, I'll try it."

[jayremy]

I have to say, firelands as it is, is boring as HELL as a tank, most if no all fights make me wans to /wrist and now you are giving me more threat so i need to do less... you SERIOUSLY need to get your heads on right because this is just what might make me stop tanking, with firelands, i might aswell just go in, aotu hit the boss, come back 10 mins later and ask "did we kill the boss?" If any paladin tank has threat issues, it it his/her damn fault, not how threat works now, stop fecking us over, ur making it more and more boring to tank, take way the extra threat and let us have something to actually du like BUILD THREAT.... Have not said this before but, Blizzard, your idea makers, are RETARDS, fire the dumb fucks and stop making this game a joke. On both 10 and 25 man i can keep agro on everything without this, so get it reverted, your just being idiots doing this. Feck no if i want free threat, i want atleast threat to be a challenge but now... nope... why be a tank then, nothing for us to do anymore other than click a CD here and there... If you cant focus on both mitigation and threat as a tank, stop being a tank, it means YOU SUCK DONKEY BALLS! Tanking is easier than ever.

What Blizzard is alluding to, I am not 100% certain but more like 95% sure that tanks will NOT focus on threat as much anymore, INSTEAD they will focus on MITIGATION abilities and timing them along with the typical positioning stuff.


So the main goal seems to be, instead of worrying about whether or not everything that needs to beating on you is, you will be worrying about timing your defensive abilities (hence the death strike mentioning on the post). Hopefully death strike style gameplay will be much larger of a role, this time it looks like it may be, for all tanks at that.

You may say he mitigation is simple as is, but I am very certain it will be changes in the future to be more available - less CD controlled- and more about resources and appropriate timing.

[Darkley]

What Blizzard is alluding to, I am not 100% certain but more like 95% sure that tanks will NOT focus on threat as much anymore, INSTEAD they will focus on MITIGATION abilities and timing them along with the typical positioning stuff.


So the main goal seems to be, instead of worrying about whether or not everything that needs to beating on you is, you will be worrying about timing your defensive abilities (hence the death strike mentioning on the post). Hopefully death strike style gameplay will be much larger of a role, this time it looks like it may be, for all tanks at that.

The problem is, with firelands being as easy for tanks as it is (its more a raid for dps and healers) we have more than enough time for both, if you take away one thing such as threat, why even bother? Mitigating damage is easy, building threat was the one real challenge

[jayremy]

The problem is, with firelands being as easy for tanks as it is (its more a raid for dps and healers) we have more than enough time for both, if you take away one thing such as threat, why even bother? Mitigating damage is easy, building threat was the one real challenge

I edited my last post because I didn't clarify it, i'll mention again, here though. They may make mitigation more of an active role, which means based on player skill, and from its current form, "harder" as well, because now you can mess up, maybe there will be much more to actively pay attention to.

Likely you will see tanks getting their damage abilities coupled with a defensive effect as well, not all but some.

This also means in the future if Blizzard goes steps further boss will have multiple mini enrages and burst moments, Blizzard could make it so you constantly gotta be hitting these defensive abilities to counter them.


This is all in assumption, but seems very likely.

[Etna]

So we are back to DaD/consacration/thunterclap and afk, really nice blizz like i was having threat problems from having has low hit/exp has I could possibly have to begin with

[Calamari]

You are contradicting yourself:

I have to say, firelands as it is, is boring as HELL as a tank, most if no all fights make me wans to /wrist and now you are giving me more threat so i need to do less... you SERIOUSLY need to get your heads on right because this is just what might make me stop tanking, with firelands, i might aswell just go in, aotu hit the boss, come back 10 mins later and ask "did we kill the boss?"

Mitigating damage is easy, building threat was the one real challenge

Prot paladins and warriors have too much passive mitigation, that is why damage mitigation on them is easy, our active mitigation is pretty much limited to using -dmg cooldowns on hard hitting abilities.

As Jayremy pointed out, the next step after the threat buff is to shift away from automated passive defenses of shield tanks and bears (passive shield block/absorb + avoidance), and into a DK like playstyle where in addition to managing the -%dmg cooldowns, you must also learn to synchronise your active defenses (self heals/absorb shields in case of DKs) with the bosses attacks - instead of running a dps rotation routine 24/7.

[WowgGirly]

I actually thought the only fun thing about tanking was having to try and keep aggro to make it a challenge... GUESSS NOT ANYMORE

[ashblond]

This is actually a very interesting change.

If you have read carefully GC's blog, their main concern is - what is defined to be "fun" for a tank?

I agree with GC here, that threat is indeed a boring stats. If a tank sets up a rotation or uses his abilities just to maintain the highest threat, it is not fun.

Blizzard's idea is to make Tanks' rotaion more focus on survival rather than threat generation.

This doesn't mean to make tanking easier, which most people obviously misunderstood here, but to make tanks working harder and engaging more with their survival rather than threat generation. This can actually be fun. You have to admit that current DK tanking model is more fun and engaging than passive shield tanks or druids

[sylveriemoon]

Blizzard should stop trying to make tanking "Interesting" since "Interesting" is a personal point of view. How about starting with balancing the 4 tanks please? Threat gen is perfectly fine if you maintain your rotation, defensive abilities are fine, cooldowns are fine, stop trying to drastically change something that doesn't need such changes in the first place.

[Angosia]

This is actually a very interesting change.

If you have read carefully GC's blog, their main concern is - what is defined to be "fun" for a tank?

I agree with GC here, that threat is indeed a boring stats. If a tank sets up a rotation or uses his abilities just to maintain the highest threat, it is not fun.

Blizzard's idea is to make Tanks' rotaion more focus on survival rather than threat generation.

This doesn't mean to make tanking easier, which most people obviously misunderstood here, but to make tanks working harder and engaging more with their survival rather than threat generation. This can actually be fun. You have to admit that current DK tanking model is more fun and engaging than passive shield tanks or druids

Indeed. Though, I think that DK and feral tanking models are quite similar - in that they both require the tank to hit the target to gain their mitigation. If anything, it makes me think they'll realign warriors and paladins to 'suffer' the same fate.

I tend to agree this is a better choice overall (including the threat change). It tends to make more of the mitigation an active and useful choice rather than going "oh, well, dks or druids just suck because they don't have that". Interestingly, after looking at world of logs, Druid and DK tanks are outnumbered 2:1 by paladin and warrior tanks - presumably for the same reason. (I also overheard someone say the other night that they hate healing for DKs because they take too much damage {vs other tanks}.)

Perhaps this will resolve some of the parity between tanking classes and make dps somewhat more interesting. Spamming cower because one's afraid to pull aggro every time it is off cd is not fun in the slightest.

[Buu]

Now if only they could fix the whiney, doomsayer, cynical, self-righteous, selfish, annoying, ignorant, anti-social "community" !

Probably they can. The Zandalari Dungeons differ vastly from the rest of the game. until heroic 80 dungeons the Damage Dealers could mouthbreath and DPS race each other, without big problems. In cata dungeons, they have to be more alert, but most of trash mobs are easy to mouthbreath if you're geared enough.
In Zandalari Dungeons, Blizzard made a legitimate effort to damage dealer actions MATTER. They have to do more things than DPS race each other. It's not up to the tank and healer only to deal with packs. It's a really great preparation for raids.
Thing is that most people still believing the old paradigm of DPS being easycake. Just rotate the highest damage skills and you're awesome. Well, you're NOT. You're a retard that make everything harder. Damage dealer have multiple roles. Disabling mobs, crowd control, relieve the tank from have to interrupt, control positioning. Blizzard gave multiple tools, that DPS are ignoring because they thing all they have to use is big numbers damage.

What the developers have to do now is scream "Yo, retards, Damage dealers are not only about damage! Learn to play, because you're scaring the tanks and that 40 minutes wait in dungeon finder is all your fault. DEAL WITH IT, or keep crying. Your choice."

P.S.: I can't remember when was the last time I pulled aggro from trash, and I had the boss more than 1 second on me (because a demo Lock that made my damage skyrocket with stacking buffs I had) on my hunter. So, yes, Tank losing Aggro is 90% chance of a lousy DPS, and this threat hotfix is not because blizzard lousy design, but because of DPS lousy play was punishing Tanks.

[Conzar]

It's only an issue in 5 man dungeons with a low geared tank that you don't know from Adam. If you go into a dungeon with a guildie that is still gearing 350ish while your dps gear dropped from heroic FL bosses, you know not to be an idiot with your threat. With RFD groups, just link threat to the Luck Of The Draw buff. Only 4 specs can tank now (increase the effect/shorten cooldown for kitty's Cower), so those specs become exempt to the additional effect of "5% threat reduction per random in the group (stacks up to 3)". Make it 10% if it still doesn't prove to be enough. This blanket nerf for threat really isn't needed for raids, guild runs or anything where sensible players are involved.

[ashblond]

You are contradicting yourself:





Prot paladins and warriors have too much passive mitigation, that is why damage mitigation on them is easy, our active mitigation is pretty much limited to using -dmg cooldowns on hard hitting abilities.

As Jayremy pointed out, the next step after the threat buff is to shift away from automated passive defenses of shield tanks and bears (passive shield block/absorb + avoidance), and into a DK like playstyle where in addition to managing the -%dmg cooldowns, you must also learn to synchronise your active defenses (self heals/absorb shields in case of DKs) with the bosses attacks - instead of running a dps rotation routine 24/7.

Making tanks more engaged with their survival can be very interesting. But on the other hand, what worries me is the class homogenization.

If they change the pally/warrior/druid tanking model to dk's active CD management model, blizzard has to redesign a lot of abilities to match dk's similar abilities, for balance issue, and inevitably results class homogenization.

I still prefer each class has their uniqueness and different tanking style. But balance and homogenization is really a dilema.