Hey all. I've briefly mentioned this in tweets, but wanted to provide some more concrete info here for you. In an upcoming build, we're making some major changes to tanks.
But don't freak out, tanks, this is for the better. It'd be very easy to see datamining of these changes and think the sky is falling; don't be deceived! If you do the classic "scroll to my class, read datamined changes to my class only", you'll be sad and angry. And I'll be sad that you're sad and angry.
The core issue that we're aiming to solve is with the power level of tanks' defensive abilities. And I don't mean their gameplay. Their gameplay is great, especially Active Mitigation; that's not changing. I mean their total defensive effectiveness. Health, damage reduction (flat, percentage, random avoidance, etc), passive and active, cooldowns, etc.
Tanks have gotten a lot of power creep. A tanking specialized character should be better at tanking than a non-tanking specialized character, obviously. But by how much? 3x? 5x? 10x? It's gotten to be more like 50x or even 100x. Fun fact as a point of comparison: Most of the Mythic raid bosses (first raid tier) we've been testing deal tank damage roughly equivalent to what Heroic Lei Shen (second raid tier) did, after accounting for the squish and level difference. Some even more.
So, what are we doing about it? We're effectively doing a squish to tanks defensive effectiveness, and to dungeon and raid mob damage to tanks. This list is going to sound like a big pile of nerfs, but it's important to understand that it's not. It's happening to *all* tanks, and mob damage is coming down as well, to compensate.
Additionally, before anyone points it out, yes, some of these changes affect the defensive effectiveness of non-tanks. We didn't forget that; this was done consciously, because we think these changes should be made anyway, or we're considering other changes to compensate them if necessary.
Here's a summary of the actual changes (please post this around, and discuss this, not the datamining which will paint a very skewed and incomplete picture):
- Creature damage has been retuned. In particular, the damage of creatures intended to be tanked in dungeons and raids has been drastically reduced to offset the below changes.
- The amount of Armor on Plate, Mail, Shields has been reduced significantly.
- Many tank abilities that increase maximum health have been reduced in effectiveness: Guarded by the Light, Stance of the Sturdy Ox, Bear Form, Empowered Bear Form, Blood Presence, Veteran of the Third War, Shadow of Death, Ursa Major. In most cases, the magnitudes of these effects have been reduced.
- Many tank abilities that passively reduce damage taken in some way have been reduced in effectiveness: Unwavering Sentinel, Improved Defensive Stance, Mastery: Critical Block, Defensive Stance, Sanctuary, Guarded by the Light, Stance of the Sturdy Ox, Bear Form, Blood Presence, Primal Fury. In most cases, the magnitudes of these effects have been reduced.
- Many tank abilities that provide Active Mitigation have been reduced in effectiveness: Shield Block, Shield Barrier, Shield of the Righteous, Mastery: Divine Bulwark, Bastion of Glory, Guard, Stance of the Sturdy Ox, Shuffle, Savage Defense, Pulverize, Frenzied Regeneration, Tooth and Claw, Death Strike, Rune Tap. In most cases, the frequencies or magnitudes of these effects have been reduced.
- Many tank abilities that provided long-cooldown temporary defensive buffs have been reduced in effectiveness: Shield Wall, Last Stand, Demoralizing Shout, Divine Protection, Guardian of Ancient Kings (Protection), Fortifying Brew, Barkskin, Bristling Fur, Survival Instincts, Might of Ursoc, Bone Shield, Dancing Rune Weapon, Icebound Fortitude, Vampiric Blood. In most cases, the durations of these effects have been reduced.
- Resolve has been changed to no longer scale with Stamina, only incoming damage over the last 10 sec, and its scaling rate changed.
- Resolve % = 100 * MAX(0, 8.5 * (1 - e^(-0.045*DamageMod)) - 1)
- DamageMod refers to the % of a basic equal-level creature attacking you that you've had directed at you over the last 10 sec.
We understand that these changes will sound scary, but ask that you keep an open mind and try to comprehend the complete picture. Tuning may be pretty rough for a few builds as we iterate on these changes, so please be patient.
I'll try to answer questions as I have time, but please understand that we're all extremely busy trying to finish and polish things over here, so time is limited.
Thanks, everyone!
Is the plan for tanks to still do ~70% of DPS damage? Just wondering.
I don't know that we've given specific numbers, but those plans haven't changed.
First thing stood out to me is that some of the long-CD abilities being altered will have an affect on Melee DPS's raid survivability.
And while I will concede that in 1st teir, incidental AoE damage on the raid (melee specifically) wasn't too terrible in Mists, I'd like to know if this is something that's being kept in mind as you alter those cooldowns. Especially in the long run, as we proceed to the 2nd (and maybe 3rd) teir of raiding in WoD.
Yes, it is indeed being kept in mind.
I'm confused as to why these changes would be introduced near the very end of mythic testing. Would it not have made more sense to make all of these major class changes, such as the gimping of Holy Paladins and now the squishing of tanks at the beginning of mythic testing so you have more than a week or twos worth of data to play with?
We'll still be doing considerable testing.
I am somewhat concerned with one change. The reductions to both the power and duration of long cooldown tank CDs.
We just reduced the duration of long cooldown tank CDs, except for a couple where we changed the cooldown or magnitude instead. I don't believe anything had both the magnitude and duration changed.
This sounds interesting. It sounds like non-tanks will have better survivability compared to tanks. In my opinion, non-tanks should be able to take a hit or two without being one-shot while tanks can take a few more hits before they risk dying. Healing a non-tank should be doable for short periods of time, but not sustainable over a large part of an encounter, but tanks shouldn't be indestructible.
That sounds like the goal, so I'm interested to see how it plays out.
Indeed.
Well if this is scaled with encounters, I guess it's not too bad, but how will this effect our effectiveness in PvP?
We had been planning to raise the amount of damage tanks take in PvP further, but are doing this instead. We're going to see how that works out, and may leave it at 25%, or even remove it if that looks reasonable based on testing.
Actually, can't edit it into the OP; post is getting too long. So, editing in a link to this post.
- Resolve has been changed to no longer scale with Stamina, only incoming damage over the last 10 sec, and its scaling rate changed.
- Resolve % = 100 * MAX(0, 8.5 * (1 - e^(-0.045*DamageMod)) - 1)
- DamageMod refers to the % of a basic equal-level creature attacking you that you've had directed at you over the last 10 sec.
- This Resolve amount is much much larger than previously. To compensate for that, baseline healing and absorption from tanks is being significantly reduced. The net result will be a curve that keeps abilities such as Word of Glory, Frenzied Regeneration, or Shield Barrier scaling roughly in parallel to other %-based abilities such as Shield of the Righteous, Savage Defense, or Shield Block; weak when fighting weak enemies, and strong when fighting strong enemies.
With these changes, all that you said are the roles of a tank can be served by a DPS in defensive stance. If that puts out better DPS and we still survive, then why be a tank?
The need to be very careful reducing damage done by mobs just so they can reduce our defensive ability. There is a point where a tank is no longer required and can just be done by a plate wearing dps.
There is a point, but it is *extremely* far away, and we are nowhere even remotely close to that point. This isn't going to make non-tanks able to replace tanks.
So if I'm understanding this correctly, at level 100, DamageMod = (damage taken in last 10 seconds) / ( 3615.3 * 10 ) ?
Is the time-decay mechanism of the previous version of Resolve, in which an attack was worth 2x Resolve at the time of impact and decayed away continuously to being worth 0 Resolve after 10 seconds, gone entirely?
The time-decay mechanism from the previous version is still there. So it's (weighted damage taken in last 10 sec) / (3615.3 * 10).
Also I have to echo the opinions above about AM. If AM is nerfed too much it will get to a point where it doesn't matter if you use it or not. AM should feel meaningful to use.
Fear not. We're not making anywhere close to that level of change.