~80% tank threat reduction on beta

[Cosmic Janitor]

This will essentially have the same effect as skittish weeks, it's mostly there to fuck with melee dps but instead of every couple of weeks it is now used as their crutch to balance m+ all the time. It will certainly effect tank populations at the lower end of the scale, even more so some time into the expansion, because who would queue into a heroic when you can be sure to encounter a bunch of dps that you will never be able to hold threat against? Seems to me a bit short sighted, they should have done that only for m+ at a certain point (like +5 onwards).

[Segus1992]

HAHA i love it when people out themselves as knowing knothing about vanilla tanking.

Battle shout is our biggest aoe threat maker in vanilla due to buffing allies worked in the same way as healing them. Battle shout actually gives a ton of threat.

Come back here when you arent a wrath baby

Ah yes, the once a two minute slight AoE threat ability. That makes me a Wrath baby, because I didn't know something about Vanilla that I haven't played for 13 years. Reaching hard here aren't we.

[Deleted]

I really think that long-term this will become more harm than it's worth. Yes, I'm sure it's manageable right now on beta when the majority of the playerbase is relatively close in gear, but once a few raid tiers have come out is when things will really start to degrade.

Once you have geared raiders stepping into LFR (like they always seem to do) or the LFG que and are paired with a new/undergeared tank, that's when people will realize why this change is likely to be just another headache.

The organized raid/dungeon groups will probably be just fine, but I will bet that we'll see even longer ques in LFR/LFG as less people want to try their hand at tanking, especially if they haven't been keeping on their tank being geared.

There is nothing wrong with undergeared tanks doing not enough aggro. But for the lfr I would just put a buff for the tanks so they'll generate more aggro.

For m+ and raids you must have enough gear, as everyone else

[Thrif]

If you harbouring a system that caters to horrible players, which is a statment you made btw not i, that hinders you to introduce game mechanics, the game seems to have fundemental problems.

Well, you could implement smarter mechanics, like the one suggested by Charge me Doctor, which would give the higher skilled community the same payout without causing the lower skilled communities to suffer and inflate LFR/LFD-ques.

Although you're not exactly wrong. The game could improve a lot in quality if it didn't have to care so much about many groups. Not caring about the horrible players would allow you do implement more interesting mechanics, and not caring so much about the fine-tuning no life mythic raiders would allow to have fun classes over extremely well balanced and homogenized ones. But sadly they need to cater to all groups or they'd lose a huge part of their income.

[Deleted]

Ah yes, the once a two minute slight AoE threat ability. That makes me a Wrath baby, because I didn't know something about Vanilla that I haven't played for 13 years. Reaching hard here aren't we.

No it worked every fucking time you buffed with it and it was no where near slight. It was around the same threat as a thunder clap that you couldnt do from defensive stance. You have been outed bro

[unbound]

It's hilariously stupid.

Like I said in a different thread, if you want tanks to suddenly care who DPS go full out on, then fine, they will start caring, but if the numbers actually enforce this, then DPS will also immediately be told to mind their burst and not to go all out. And this just kills the fun for DPS and creates a new unwanted rivalry between who cannot fucking DPS and who cannot fucking tank with negatives for everyone, for zero reason. You think it's interesting gameplay for a tank to tab-target mobs evenly and watch the threat bars? It's more of a chore, frankly, but even if some tanks on some planet find it somewhat interesting, that's nothing compared to the huge loss of interest for DPS. As a DPS I am now not going to be able to do my max, I will have to adjust to how bad / inattentive the tank is. They say that's "group play". Gee, thanks. /sarcasm

A terrible change.

Yeah. I remember in Vanilla and BC where every DPS player was absolutely miserable because that was how it worked!!! /eyeroll

[Hekazi]

It will annoy bad players.

[MilesMcStyles]

ugggh i don't wanna have to comb through a dps app's log just to see if his current tank wasn't letting him do optimal dps.

dumb change if it stands

[Raikh]

Threat being an issue is just degenerate in the current state of the game. A healthy minimum threshold of threat so that a tank has to push buttons is fine but it should never ever become an essential part of gameplay.

Threat doesn't reward tanks, it rewards and punishes dps. It abritrarily limits throughput of your group based on gear, skill and situation and can and would inevitably make sure that tanks which have pure ST or AoE threat to be automatically beign benched on encounters or m+ where that matters.
A dps role also becomes void when his throughput isn't limited by using his on abilities to maximum effect but by his tanks gear and competence. You could literally fail a dps check like Krosus or Butcher not ebcause your dps lack throughput but because your tank can't manage to keep up with the dps requirements.
You also mgiht not be able to carry other people properly by making up for their lower nubmers because you yourself are dps locked behind your tanks performance.

Don't get me started on class design where burst specs would be made unviable because they rely on high damage spikes which are not supportable via threat egneration while sustained dps can just push numbers all day. Additionally the obvious differentiation between ranged and melee threat, where melee need 110% to get slapped and ranged 130%. So in a world where both would pull equivalent damage you would prioritize the ranged because he pulls threat. And don't come along with vanilla. Vanilla is from a gameplay and design perspective a catastrophe where more than half the specs weren't even really functional. The game only worked well for a specific set of classes and isn't comparable to the current game which strives for a healthy game balance.

Not saying it will be like this with these changes btw. Talking about the extreme case where its actually a gameplay component. If threat levels were however similar to skittish I would probably retreat from all pug activites. Skittish is a fucking nightmare to deal with and just a terrible affix since there is no coutnerplay but bringing atleast one of two classes and you could also think about how skittish is banned from the MDI as an affix.
I don't want tanks to hold aggro by doing nothing but it shouldn't be a hard limiter to dps throughput. Just stop doing stuff because reasons and being punished by playing with lower geared or skilled players is not fun.

I find having to deal with number checks, priority adds, intelligent interrupts or short-term CC and correct positioning much more engaging, especially towards maximization, than having to deal with threat and slow paced mob by mob and pack by pack purely formulaic pull behavior where nothing is be improved until your tanks gear allows you to actually use yours.
Like now, where your gear yourself and others and not in a world where having too much gear punishes you or having too little gear punishes your group members. Thats just bad game design.

[Segus1992]

No it worked every fucking time you buffed with it and it was no where near slight. It was around the same threat as a thunder clap that you couldnt do from defensive stance. You have been outed bro

The difference is that you clearly play on private servers, I haven't played Vanilla for over a decade. But whatever you want to feel prideful about dog.

[Vakna]

Literally makes no difference, I've played two tanks to mythic dungeon level on beta and the rest (except monk) to heroic dungeon level and never had a problem with threat. Not noticeable at all. Put down a D&D and do 1 Blood Boil and everything still sticks to my DK just like it used too.

Due to the MUCH less bursty nature of DPS in BfA it's extremely unlikely to see threat rips at all, only time it might happen is if a DPS unloads for a sustained period of time on a target that is not their primary and is never directly attacked by the tank, and in that situation they will learn their mistake by dying.

[Draco-Onis]

Yeah. I remember in Vanilla and BC where every DPS player was absolutely miserable because that was how it worked!!! /eyeroll

The game has changed since then you can say that ship has sailed, blizzard made changes to game mechanics that heavily favor go all out especially speed runs which missed the point. I think it's too little too late as much as I miss the good old days this change if it goes live will be a disaster.

[Sammonoske]

Oh well, I'll just go back to blaming and kicking dps that pull threat, even if it happened to be my fault because I got lazy.

[beelgers]

I don't think this is nearly as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Weren't threat modifiers in Cata less than 400%? Plus tank damage is much more competitive now. Plus tanks have more AOE tools. This isn't going to be like Classic/TBC. This just means a mob might peel off a bad tank when it gets slightly out of range of that tanks AOE or a DPS goes crazy on a mob on the fringe. I'm not concerned. Think this will be a non-issue.

[Meerkatz]

I haven't read all 18 pages of this thread, but I've read a fair amount with interest. I've only been playing since WoD, main heals and dabble in dps/tanks. But I play all three roles in other games. In other games not here, all classes have some sort of threat management tool, some have two. As a healer I have a cooldown that lets me drop threat every so often and as a caster I have that AND I have a cooldown that lets me not generate aggro for x seconds. As a tank I can choose to use aggro combos or dps combos and I do sometimes have to hit a lot of mobs with aggro generation of some kind. Final Fantasy tanks have defensive/offensive stances.

What I'm trying to say I guess is that everyone has choices that don't seem to be available here. While there are some things that are real shit in FF (server ticks ffs), a high synergy group can output a huge amount of damage and no one will die, with everyone using their threat management tools. It looks to me like the real problem with mechanics implementations like this (more threat/less threat) is that the only threat mitigation is to not do damage which seems ridiculously counter intuitive to me.

I'm really curious to know why threat management tooling is limited to one or two classes in this game?

[Marrilaife]

Weren't threat modifiers in Cata less than 400%?

It was around 400% but you forgot massively OP vengeance mechanic (not the dh spec, the buff tank was getting when getting hit). I remember tanking ragnaros in firelands and having to stop dps for 5 seconds when the other tank was due to take over or I'd pull aggro back from him. That mechanic ended up being even more bonkers in MOP that promoted literally solo tanking if possible so all the vengeance stacks on one tank (preferably monk, making him a little one man army that did massive dps and never died). In WOD vengeance was replaced by resolve, and in Legion completely removed.

[MechaCThun]

inb4 every DPS in the beta becomes "bad DPS" for pulling off tanks

[Multitorix Davlen]

It's a good change. Having tank skill completely focused on survivability makes it hard to heal them as most tanks are shit with barely any brain cells, they think that tanking is about healing or reducing damage when it's all about smoothing the damage not avoiding/healing it; there is a healer in the party for a reason. Personally, if the tanking community were highly skilled, this would be horrible change; unfortunately good tanks are very rare to come across. With less focus on survivability and more on threat, at least if they fuck up the dps should be able to manage their aggro.

Except the role of a tank is to mitigate damage since they're the ones taking 90% of it(Baring room wide AoEs), while threat should be a factor since being a tank means making sure stuff is targeting you rather than anything else, the minigame of threat management has never been fun to me and further cements how bad tab targeting is and has been. And depending on whats happening like moving from one spot to another slightly behind you, clicking on a target's nameplate can be/is inconvenient. And to some people, like my DK bros out there, healing the damage taken IS what we're there for, its the basis of our whole kit.
inb4 git guds, i am - that doesn't mean its fun.

[Soon-TM]

This is a potentially very good change, but the dish will still need a few more ingredients in order to become edible. Not every class has aggro dumps like Vanish or Invisibility, and utility (which helps the group by buffing/offhealing/offtanking/kiting) has been constantly pruned since WoD. For example, all plate wearers should be able to offtank for a limited time, so that they can do *something* in the case that things go south threat-wise. It also makes sense; they are wearing freaking plate after all.

[bufferunderrun]

hope this is a prelude for the return of the hold stats/combat system from tbc.