M+ tank balance

[Meiffert]

That may be due to the prevalence of DKs in the current M+ meta, which leads players to stick to one class. Are you able to pull up what the top guilds are using?

On progression monks were the most common and considered best for their insane EHP.
A lot of double monks on Fetid and G'huun. A DK was commonly brought for Zek'voz and Mythrax for grips.

Nowadays top guilds do multiple clears and gear up multiple classes to have options next tier, so current data would no longer be relevant.

Actually I don't think that tanks could be properly balanced at all. They are too different. Paladins and warriors could be balanced. Probably DK and DH could be balanced. But all 5 tanks? Impossible, unless they just homogenize them and that's would be much worse. But it does not mean that they should not try. In the latest 2 patches balance was terrible and they did not do any fixes for months which is unacceptable.

Yeah, I agree with this.
It's not really possible to balance self-heal tanks, EHP tanks, and mitigation tanks because different content requires different tools.
Say you balance them perfectly for heroic raiding. That will still keep them unbalanced in normal/mythic or dungeons.
Plus scaling will throw it off as well. Say you balance them for ilvl 360. Well in 390 some will pull ahead.

I can understand Blizzard trying to not overreact in knee-jerk fashion to swing the balance back and forth constantly, but I agree that waiting an entire tier to offer 2-3 % buffs to classes that are significantly weaker in all types of content is disappointing.

It's not about utility. It's about survivability. You can replace most of utility abilities with other classes or just ignore them. It does not matter until the highest challenge modes which are not interesting to the general audience.

Depends a lot on the encounter.
There are bosses that hit hard and you just want 2x monk for EHP (Fetid), but there are bosses where DKs were brought for grips.
There are some other utility reasons (such as paladins for 3x immunities on Maiden hammers for example), it just wasn't applicable this tier (or at least important enough, you could solo soak on Taloc on paladin, but it's not worth to gear up/bring a class for something like that).

[Fleckens]

Are we just going to ignore how druid in legion despise being OP and taking almost no damage, were not kings for m+? DK/dh and monks were always prefered over druids.

There is a point where damage taken is irrelevant and dps/utility is more important. This is especially true in m+, where you only have 4 other people, so what each member can or cant do matter the most.

Pretty sure druids were prefered until 8.1.5 where dk's got buffs and druids got nerfs, at which point they were more equal but druids were stilll a very strong choice. It was first with the nerfs after that(8.2.5 I believe) where they removed things like mark of ursol and such that they no longer were as popular in mythic+, but at that point they weren't really that desired in raids either, outside of things like kj where you needed the roars. However apart from warriors being pretty shit the balance was definitely closer there than it is now, looking at the mythic+ top runs in 7.3 you see all tanks except warrior represented in the top 30 runs, compared to now where you have to go to nearly top 200 to even find anything but monk or dk.

Warriors do show up slightly earlier in bfa though, but still far later than other tanks and druid doesn't show up for even longer than warriors in legion.

[Chillside]

still blows my mind everyone wants everyone "equal" it reminds me of todays society. emasculated men. defeminized women. And a game whos obsession with homogenization has already taken it to the abysmal place its in, they ask for more of it da.

i remember when people used to play an mmorpg and picked their toon for reasons other than what was OP. I play a ww. last xpac we slayed m+. this xpac, not so much.

guess who isnt switching from monk or crying on the forums?

why? (apart from being an objective grown ass man) I like monk as a class, irrespective of whether its what the kids call "meta".

and on the surface, id rather be great at a bad class, than fotm'ing my way through content. Have you no shame.

mhm... *fistbump*

[Extremities]

Blizzard does not do rotation. Blizzard does bad balance. That's all. Warriors were relatively good in the first week of the first Legion raid, then they got nerfed to the ground and never were viable since then. It's not about equalizing. It's about viability. Difference between tanks is just too big.

Actually I don't think that tanks could be properly balanced at all. They are too different. Paladins and warriors could be balanced. Probably DK and DH could be balanced. But all 5 tanks? Impossible, unless they just homogenize them and that's would be much worse. But it does not mean that they should not try. In the latest 2 patches balance was terrible and they did not do any fixes for months which is unacceptable. Basically any proper raid tank should maintain roster of alts and switch to FOTM class of the patch.

- - - Updated - - -


It's not about utility. It's about survivability. You can replace most of utility abilities with other classes or just ignore them. It does not matter until the highest challenge modes which are not interesting to the general audience.

I’m sorry but I disagree with you 100%. Playing 4 tanks through mythic+ content there’s been countless times where when playing one of my non DK tanks, I wish I had the utility abilities my DK has. Does the survivability Help? Yes but it’s no where near having the usefulness of the utility, especially the BR. I’m sure there’s many tanks who will agree(and disagree). Even my group of buddies I play with say the same. “We need your DK for all that he brings”. Not a we need him for his survivability. It’s all about the utility. The survivability does help but is less impactful than what he brings overall.

[Marrilaife]

It's not really possible to balance self-heal tanks, EHP tanks, and mitigation tanks because different content requires different tools.

It's not possible because some models are always superior to others on progression raiding. Tank with gaps in mitigation will always be inferior to the ones with the same levels of mitigation all the time, because it's easier to manage by the tank, and easier for healers to react.

Unless maaaybe they design a boss where when you tank swap, you do nothing, but most of the time you still do something (tank an add, take constant debuff damage, etc.) so you can't stop using all your mitigation tools to let them recharge fully in preparation for the next swap.

You also have bosses like fetid where the gaps between boss hits are too short to let mitigation recharge in between, at best you can try to time it so 1 mitigation charge covers 2 hits so you save a charge. I haven't seen a warrior or dh take thrashes ever on progression, on farm maybe, because they outgear it so they can bridge the gaps with ignore pain or self heals.

Self-healing and absorbs have also 2 models: % scale (with damage taken, multiplication of incoming heals, etc.) and flat scaling (usually from AP coefficient), the second one will always be outscaled in difficult content and only strong when you vastly outgear the content.

There's a general opinion which I think has a point, that you can't nerf monk and dk "a little bit" to dethrone them from the position of king of raid tanking and m+ tanking respectively without breaking the spec or making it unplayable shit, or giving their tools to other tanks (the dreaded homogenization).

You could, however, give other tanks tools to make them situationally better over the "generalist" options, or buff them to the point that when the encounter favours them, they're visibly superior, while still staying behind on encounters that don't synergize with their kit.

And yes, I suspect that dks taking 2nd spot in raid representation is mostly a factor of people already gearing a dk for m+ and / or cases of "what if we need massgrip". Warrior and dh have very little expectation to be "required" for a boss due to their utility, since warrior has very little and dh has mostly trash control abilities (sigils), paladin mostly if you need stuff like spellwarding or immunity (and Blizzard usually doesn't like if encounter can be cheesed through immunities so the expectation of this "necessity" is low), and bear if you need stampeding roar (this patch with increased cd on it and reduced range it was never expected to be as impactful as let's say in tomb, they're lowering the cd back for next patch so we'll see...).

Traditionally dk's grip / massgrip was more often useful than other tank's "utility" so people will gear their dks just in case, and since it's the best tank for m+, they will keep playing it unless Blizzard nerfs it to complete dumpster (like early legion).

Monk I don't think can be "fixed" because stagger will always be massively OP in a scenario where you have 4-5 healers throwing hots and aoe heals in the raid, they will always have easiest time keeping a monk alive without extra sweat. Even if monk takes extra upfront damage, stagger, stacking dodge and celestial fortune mitigates most of the downside.

When it comes to m+ the fact dk has grip, massgrip and talented slow that starts at 90% is already a big part of their success, now having tools like bonestorm is just a cherry on the cake and allows super massive pulls (that part of bonestorm is getting nerfed next patch). DH's spirit bombs also has synergy with big pulls, while other remaining tanks don't have similar capabilities. Unfortunately DH doesn't have in-built kiting tools so they can't rival DKs. Having to rely on someone else help you kite requires more coordination, so it's more difficult, and people will gravitate towards path of least resistance.

[Khorm]

Monk I don't think can be "fixed" because stagger will always be massively OP

Stagger can be nerfed when they include another AM to Monks.

[dcc626]

Stagger can be nerfed when they include another AM to Monks.

wont happen mid xpac. so get used to it until 9.0 at least.

[Marrilaife]

Stagger can be nerfed when they include another AM to Monks.

wont happen mid xpac. so get used to it until 9.0 at least.

Both statements are true. Ironskin brew is pretty no-brainer to use, require less thought put into it than other "active mitigation" types like demon spikes or ironfur. Which makes monks more boring, but more effective to use. And guess what, they're implementing new azerite trait that drinking ironskin has a chance to not consume the charge... Making it even more lenient on people who spam ironskin. How about they make a trait like that for the tanks that have to actually be stingy with their mitigation charges... Nah, why.

[Deleted]

DK and Monk are actually the most common tanks by a wide margin this tier. Other than G'huun, which you start to see more double Monk, you'll most commonly see a DK and Monk tank in mythic. There's more DKs than the 4 classes of Paladin, Warrior, Druid, and Demon Hunter combined

Being most common =/= being the best.
DK being popular is nothing new, it was popular even on emerald nightmare when it was utter shit garbage tier, we now have a lot of DKs because they are both popular, best in M+ and decent in raids, so it is a safe pick.
Won't argue they are OP on M+ that's why they are nerfing it.

There are bosses that hit hard and you just want 2x monk for EHP (Fetid), but there are bosses where DKs were brought for grips.

DK is the best offtank at fetid devourer tho, as long as you don't get one-shoted (depending on gear luck mostly the first week), you are reducing ~40% dmg from armor, 35% from WotN and you can also use DS once every hit, even twice in some hits if you really needed it. Taking in account self-heals, you are mitigating around 70% dmg. The only hard part was surviving the enrage, but even on the first weeks you had more than enough CDs to survive. In my case it was Vampiric -> Barkskin -> Armor Potion -> Icebound -> Vampiric again -> boss ded, and i also had purgatory always ready just in case.

[Ealyssa]

There’s an imbalance because of 1 thing - Utility.

That's not even remotely true.

MM raid tanking is all about survivability. Prot paladins have way more utility than a DK or a BrM. They still are nowhere near their pickrate. And that's for a reason : they aren't as solid, period.

[Hoeth]

There’s an imbalance because of 1 thing - Utility.

Until Blizzard wakes up and removes their heads from their asses and adds new abilities to the other tanks, this will continue. They think it’s due to their “survivability” when in reality, it’s their overall toolkit, especially their utility abilities.

Judging from their lack of tank changes in 8.1 to the Guardian Druid and Prot war(which they did get some changes but only a few), it just proves my point with their heads being up their asses.

Its the same with DPS specs. "Most" are relatively close DPS-wise when you look at the overall package. Yeah some are much better at cleave or AOE while others are better ST, but pretty much all of them have the capacity to be competitive in both mythic raids and M+. The big difference is in utility and survivability. In Legion some specs simply could not survive the unavoidable one-shot mechanics too many bosses had in higher tyrannical keys. Now the trash and affixes are generally the critical element and if you don't have things like shroud, hard CC, permanent easy snares, displacements, etc. you probably have a hard time getting any M+ pugs done, no matter your IO score or ilvl.

[Marrilaife]

MM raid tanking is all about survivability. Prot paladins have way more utility than a DK or a BrM. They still are nowhere near their pickrate. And that's for a reason : they aren't as solid, period.

Prot paladins don't have utility that is as crucial / non-replaceable as grip / massgrip. Uldir had several bosses where bringing a DK was useful due to grips: Mythrax, Zek'voz, and depending on your strat, possibly also Zul (if your strat was "cc all the hexers and zerg boss with 7 rogues" then I guess not really needed... Still if you got multiple hexer waves you needed grip or knockback to separate them before ccing so they don't trigger the healing link). Nearly every early Mythrax kill featured a blood dk, one reason could be melee spots were so limited you couldn't bring too many dps dks to cover the grips, safer to cover some with your tank.

[Extremities]

Prot paladins don't have utility that is as crucial / non-replaceable as grip / massgrip. Uldir had several bosses where bringing a DK was useful due to grips: Mythrax, Zek'voz, and depending on your strat, possibly also Zul (if your strat was "cc all the hexers and zerg boss with 7 rogues" then I guess not really needed... Still if you got multiple hexer waves you needed grip or knockback to separate them before ccing so they don't trigger the healing link). Nearly every early Mythrax kill featured a blood dk, one reason could be melee spots were so limited you couldn't bring too many dps dks to cover the grips, safer to cover some with your tank.

This right here ^

Prot Pallies do have a lot of utility but its not like a DK's utility. Grips, AoE grip, Battle Rez, etc all outshine anything the other tanks by FAR for mythic+. THAT is why there's a huge imbalance. Yes the survivability helps but the utility as Ive said 19823981238 times before is what makes a DK shine in M+. Even with the DK nerfs, you'll still see an imbalance in M+. I bet anyone to think otherwise. Even with Prot War buffs, even with the Guardian Druid buffs, you will still see a huge imbalance in M+. I bet anyone a hundred bucks nothing changes.

[MasterMirror]

I play a guardian druid with ilvl 375, I got declined from a FH 6 last week because the healer hates healing druids. A +6, it didn't even have griveous! I pretty much have to beg my way into a +10 for the group to give me a chance to prove myself every week.

I'm a healer and I'll be honest: it's really a pain healing druid at the current state of things, BUT this is no way a reason to decline people from M+. If you're tanking with druid, fine I'll do my best to keep up. Plus, it's a nice change of pace healing someone who actually NEEDS to be healed, other than these DKs and DHs who do all themselves. :P

DK just lends itself to the M+ meta just as rogues, mages and disc priests lend themselves to pvp. Classes having a niche is fine. There are better raid tanks than DKs, and that's fine

So much this. Different content should have different "best related specs", otherwise we would have a tank which is the best tank for everything (maybe even pvp lul), a healer which is the best for dungs, raids and pvp and so on. And this would be very annoying.

[Marrilaife]

So much this. Different content should have different "best related specs", otherwise we would have a tank which is the best tank for everything (maybe even pvp lul), a healer which is the best for dungs, raids and pvp and so on. And this would be very annoying.

Until you realize there are 2 types of pve content, tanks aren't super useful in pvp, so you get 1 tank for m+ 1 tank for raids and 4 tanks for nothing. How unfortunate if you're not one of the chosen 2.

[MasterMirror]

4 tanks for nothing.

I strongly disagree with this, unless you're progressing with Limit or something like that.

[Marrilaife]

I strongly disagree with this, unless you're progressing with Limit or something like that.

Wish it was true, but in Uldir I've witnessed the extreme pressure to reroll brewmaster and many tanks caving in, even in guilds within 300-500 world rank range, so nowhere close to "world race" level. The imbalance was just that bad, especially on fetid / mythrax / ghuun.

[Kerathul]

Wish it was true, but in Uldir I've witnessed the extreme pressure to reroll brewmaster and many tanks caving in, even in guilds within 300-500 world rank range, so nowhere close to "world race" level. The imbalance was just that bad, especially on fetid / mythrax / ghuun.

Nonsense as a top 500 guild we have cleared everything with a warrior tank and a blood DK. Nobody pressured the warrior tank to play brewmaster.

I mean at some point you just outgear content, Method with their overall ilvl while killing G'huun at 373.50 then the "best" tanks would mean something. When we killed G'huun we were standing at 381.95 overall. So the difference between tanks mean less and less when you get more gear.

The top 100 world guild (Pure) had 379.63 overall on their first G'huun kill.

What I'm saying is that if you are not in the race to world 1st. So basically if you are not in the guilds: Method, Exorsus or Limit it doesn't really matter what tanks you have. The base thing is that people saw the top guilds kill G'huun with that setup with those two tanks so they NEED to have that setup as well otherwise it is downright impossible to kill G'huun.

At that point it is not the class but the player being light headed.


Side note, is that this is getting a more and more common thing, people picking FOTM classes and all the other classes in their view suck major league.