Tank power in DF M+

[Amariw]

From Tank streams, it seems even with downscaled ilevel (where dps and heals are often one shot due to how low their ilvl is compared to mobs), most tanks barely need healer intervention and at times even outheal the damage they take.

If this isn't a tuning issue, which i don't think it is seeing as prepatch is live by now, I'm curious about the design goals.

Its very fun to mitigate damage as tanks, but i thought the mitigation levels we had in most of Legion, BFA and SL were great. You had cds and active mitigation to feel like a king during very high damage, but you still needed some healer attention, and at times a lot of it.

The only exceptions are DKs who dominate current m+ meta by being nigh invincible and almost entirely self sustaining. I hope blizzard's solution wasn't to turn everyone into DK levels. This leaves tanks with much less risk, and leaves healers rather bored as they only get to heal the party rather than use strong single target kit.

Spells like Druid's Lifebloom and Shaman's Earth Shield, for example, become much less satisfying when there isn't a target taking big and sustained damage. It'd be a shame if that's the case, and i wonder what the community feels about it.

[Lochton]

You shouldn't really base anything on stats and balancing now, and wait for the balancing patch in Dragonflight.

[jeezusisacasual]

A well played tank should need as much output from a healer as previous seasons / expansions as it showcases how good a tank can be when played properly. My brewmaster's last few screenshots had him finishing the dungeon with around 9k overall HPS beating the Shaman at 7.1 with him only healing me with 30% of those heals which is fine since it allows them to provide more then just raw healing power from CC to DPS or kicks.

I am not a main healer but i assumed most of it is no more then maintenance management right? Triage when needed dps when its not sort of thing and planning cd's accordingly for the tougher packs and all that jazz? I assume they also know when to expect to use the CDs at the rougher portions of the dungeons? Do they get excited like i do when things go sideways and 3 members are on the brink of death?

[Amariw]

You shouldn't really base anything on stats and balancing now, and wait for the balancing patch in Dragonflight.

You're not wrong, but it seemed rampant on almost all tanks (i checked prot wars, brewmasters, dks, vengeanc dhs. I don't watch prot pala streams so can't speak for those). All of them basically ignored damage on pulls that creamed other party members. It could simply be a tuning error but looks to me like intended design if its across all tanks.

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A well played tank should need as much output from a healer as previous seasons / expansions as it showcases how good a tank can be when played properly. My brewmaster's last few screenshots had him finishing the dungeon with around 9k overall HPS beating the Shaman at 7.1 with him only healing me with 30% of those heals which is fine since it allows them to provide more then just raw healing power from CC to DPS or kicks.

I am not a main healer but i assumed most of it is no more then maintenance management right? Triage when needed dps when its not sort of thing and planning cd's accordingly for the tougher packs and all that jazz? I assume they also know when to expect to use the CDs at the rougher portions of the dungeons? Do they get excited like i do when things go sideways and 3 members are on the brink of death?

Depends on key level, expansion and size of pull. VS tank buster mechanics or very large pulls, a healer will often need some cd to keep tank up, or at least continued focused single target rotation. That's part of the fun imo, tank and heal working together to overcome obscene amount of damage.

If we don't have that, tanks dont really get to bask in the full power of their kit as they're never threatened, and healers don't get to use heavy single target output (just triage group memebers after the ocasional party damage).

[jeezusisacasual]

While i enjoy being responsible for myself i can get why people who liked that playstyle of healing and wish it had more moments to shine for them. Should i be 100% reliant upon myself? I would say no i should need more then 30% of the heals but at which point is that good enough? 40?45?50? Also each tank is vastly different in terms of how they handle damage intake which further complicates the issue. I could honestly see a world where every 20 key would require X Tank only but perhaps i am reading to much into it and while i want them to have their niche i can assure you that healers doing dps in their downtime will be here to stay.

[Plehnard]

If the DDs know what to interrupt a tank already barely need any external heals aside from bosses under 20.
Having some extra heals will have the bigger impact in pugs, not at the top end

[Relapses]

As others have mentioned, it's pretty hard to judge the delta between tank survivability at the end of an expansion and tank survivability at the beginning of one. Just as an example, DH started off being the meta tank for S1 of SL because the class is so good at getting away from incoming damage (didn't hurt that it was literally bugged for the first 5 months either). Pair that with Moonkins and Mages being meta DPS picks, two classes which benefited heavily from DH's 5% spell damage buff, and you have a recipe for DH being vastly over-represented despite the class itself having some pretty glaring weaknesses when compared to other tanks. It wasn't until Tier that DK became meta. In S1 & S2 almost nobody played DK because it did very poor damage and the use-case for DK tanks was pretty non-existent. (It was a slightly-worse-but-more-self-sustainable Druid up until that point.) It isn't just the high DRW uptime that made DK viable. It was the fact that the high uptime came with a 50-100% buff to their damage which made it viable. DK was now the best tank in both AE and single target. DH, on the other hand, only really scaled in effectiveness with big pulls. And because of the weird reset-nature of its set bonus, prolonged bouts of shit RNG could kill you and your single target boss damage was ass. Why play a DH when DK does the same thing but better?

Moving into DF it's hard to know how things will pan out before tuning passes start to happen. It looks like Warrior is the clear winner so far, in terms of both gameplay and survivability but there's a possibility it'll change in the first few weeks. It looks like Prot Warrior, VDH and BrM are the best overall tanks for now. Prot Paladin seems to have a lot of bugs so it's hard to say how it'll pan out. DK is... definitely brought down to reasonable levels of power but has the potential to still be a pocket pick for certain situations. The only tank that really seems to be down bad is Guardian which has seemingly lost its whole identity.

[sponge5307]

As others have mentioned, it's pretty hard to judge the delta between tank survivability at the end of an expansion and tank survivability at the beginning of one. Just as an example, DH started off being the meta tank for S1 of SL because the class is so good at getting away from incoming damage (didn't hurt that it was literally bugged for the first 5 months either). Pair that with Moonkins and Mages being meta DPS picks, two classes which benefited heavily from DH's 5% spell damage buff, and you have a recipe for DH being vastly over-represented despite the class itself having some pretty glaring weaknesses when compared to other tanks. It wasn't until Tier that DK became meta. In S1 & S2 almost nobody played DK because it did very poor damage and the use-case for DK tanks was pretty non-existent. (It was a slightly-worse-but-more-self-sustainable Druid up until that point.) It isn't just the high DRW uptime that made DK viable. It was the fact that the high uptime came with a 50-100% buff to their damage which made it viable. DK was now the best tank in both AE and single target. DH, on the other hand, only really scaled in effectiveness with big pulls. And because of the weird reset-nature of its set bonus, prolonged bouts of shit RNG could kill you and your single target boss damage was ass. Why play a DH when DK does the same thing but better?

Moving into DF it's hard to know how things will pan out before tuning passes start to happen. It looks like Warrior is the clear winner so far, in terms of both gameplay and survivability but there's a possibility it'll change in the first few weeks. It looks like Prot Warrior, VDH and BrM are the best overall tanks for now. Prot Paladin seems to have a lot of bugs so it's hard to say how it'll pan out. DK is... definitely brought down to reasonable levels of power but has the potential to still be a pocket pick for certain situations. The only tank that really seems to be down bad is Guardian which has seemingly lost its whole identity.

Yup VDH wasn't that good in defence with firey brand or demon spike is on CD they are basically a paper tank and have to run away. I think it was between mid S2 and start of S3 when bear tanks is the meta due to being unkiable for 30sec every min. It was so much easier to tank nertoic weeks on a bear. Then S4 you have the unkillable DK. Other tanks still does ok but not as good as VDH druid or DK.

[Relapses]

Yup VDH wasn't that good in defence with firey brand or demon spike is on CD they are basically a paper tank and have to run away. I think it was between mid S2 and start of S3 when bear tanks is the meta due to being unkiable for 30sec every min. It was so much easier to tank nertoic weeks on a bear. Then S4 you have the unkillable DK. Other tanks still does ok but not as good as VDH druid or DK.

Guardian was only quasi-meta in S3 up until they nerfed the everliving shit out of their Tier bonus. S2 was probably their best performance because it opened up Venth as a viable option. It's also not as good at Necrotic as you might think. Yeah, you're unkillable in Incarn but if you do an Incarn pull and the pull ends up lasting more than 30 seconds you are hard fucked once your kiting tools disappear. They're also probably weaker than any other tank in the game in between those Incarn windows so it requires a lot of attentiveness on the Guardian Druid's part when it's not up (ie, most of the dungeon). It's still nice to do "bear pulls," but I wouldn't go so far to say they were meta in S3.

[Netherblood]

Depends on dungeon heavily atm and what mobs and what tank. Prot war is super OP atm and takes no dmg, other tanks def need some healer help. Most people are also only doing 15s with no fortified on beta. Some mobs truck, like first 2 mobs in Halls of Valor hit rly hard and apply nasty bleed. On 15 non fort my BDK got hit instantly from full to 40%, which is okayish as BDK but its not low dmg or anything imo.

[Malkiah]

It's still nice to do "bear pulls," but I wouldn't go so far to say they were meta in S3.

complete side note to this conversation, but i am so glad i only play in the 15-17 key range.
i've spent years reading about 'the meta' and accusations of this or that tank being 'useless' or 'required' and i completely understand the paradigm on an upper end where certain pull sizes and tactics are required in order to make the timer, but god that sounds so fucking tedious.

spending all of SL just staying in my lane around 15s and playing all of the tanks regularly (i've run every class through 15s in pugs every week for the entirety of SL) there was never really any substantial difference between the tanks except for ilevel and affixes, and it's remarkable what a different world it is to be playing when class is largely irrelevant.

[tomten]

You're not wrong, but it seemed rampant on almost all tanks (i checked prot wars, brewmasters, dks, vengeanc dhs. I don't watch prot pala streams so can't speak for those). All of them basically ignored damage on pulls that creamed other party members. It could simply be a tuning error but looks to me like intended design if its across all tanks..

I think its bit over tuned at the moment but they are making a complete design shift regarding tanks. Making us a lot more self sustainable and less healer dependant while making the tank roll easier overall. They have gone on record saying tank and to some extent healer roles have way to much responseability compared to other roles, have to know each mobs/packs, what routes to take and so on, i'm sure all of you know the burden that comes with tanks.

And they want to remove that and their way seems to make tanking as a whole A LOT easier so the extra burden evens out the role overall.
They have also increased the skill ceiling quite heavily which means someone like myself, who has tanked for almost 20 years straight? We appear to be overpowered as fuck... The average player? Not so much.

I can't answer how this will turn out in the end... I would rather have seen the mechanical aspects of m+, such as routing being less of a thing or just outright removing the seasonal affix on tanks (Which they've lessen the burden, we do get it but we get it less than half the time compared to dps).

All in all though? I'm hyped beyond belief and been loving beta for the past months. Can't recall an expansion i've been this excited for except cataclysm.
Maybe it's getting beta first time but I like a lot about DF. zones are amazing, talent trees are amazing (if you play the right spec ), dragon riding is beyond amazing, raids look solid as always and so on

With all that said, except bear tanks, everyone look super solid and and there's no real OP winner atm. People think its pwarr but it's not, not even close.

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complete side note to this conversation, but i am so glad i only play in the 15-17 key range.
i've spent years reading about 'the meta' and accusations of this or that tank being 'useless' or 'required' and i completely understand the paradigm on an upper end where certain pull sizes and tactics are required in order to make the timer, but god that sounds so fucking tedious.

None of that actually matters until you reach the very top 1% of highest keys being done. Its just a community perception that holds no ground. All tanks are viable up to the highest level, just not the last 0.1% cutoff title viable.

[Relapses]

complete side note to this conversation, but i am so glad i only play in the 15-17 key range.
i've spent years reading about 'the meta' and accusations of this or that tank being 'useless' or 'required' and i completely understand the paradigm on an upper end where certain pull sizes and tactics are required in order to make the timer, but god that sounds so fucking tedious.

spending all of SL just staying in my lane around 15s and playing all of the tanks regularly (i've run every class through 15s in pugs every week for the entirety of SL) there was never really any substantial difference between the tanks except for ilevel and affixes, and it's remarkable what a different world it is to be playing when class is largely irrelevant.

More power to you. I play all of the tank classes, too, but I do try to push on a few of them each season. (Mained VDH/Guardian in S1/2. Played all 6 tanks for S3 and mostly pushed on my BDK and Prot Pally for S4.) BDK this season has been a lot of fun and it's nice to be able to put an entire 5-man group on my back. I understand that's not everybody's cup of java but the fact that both players like you and I can coexist without having too much overlap or conflict with one another indicates to me that Blizzard is doing a pretty decent job providing compelling content for very different subsections of its playerbase.

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None of that actually matters until you reach the very top 1% of highest keys being done. Its just a community perception that holds no ground. All tanks are viable up to the highest level, just not the last 0.1% cutoff title viable.

While true, I think he was just making an observation about his personal experience more than a rebuke of the meta in general.

[tomten]

While true, I think he was just making an observation about his personal experience more than a rebuke of the meta in general.

It was more encouragement for him to try come DF and not have some community perception that isn't true holding him back.
Specially since rewards will scale to +20 in DF.

[Better]

If this isn't a tuning issue, which i don't think it is seeing as prepatch is live by now, I'm curious about the design goals.

Its very fun to mitigate damage as tanks, but i thought the mitigation levels we had in most of Legion, BFA and SL were great. You had cds and active mitigation to feel like a king during very high damage, but you still needed some healer attention, and at times a lot of it.

This just sounds like it's Legion. Healers were optional if you didn't want them, clearing a +15 without a healer wasn't an issue if you brought 4 warlocks (or any other DPS with good self sustain, warlocks were just immortal). In legion I basically told the healers in my guild "You're here for the DPS, I can handle myself."
I will say from my perspective as a tank, I enjoyed Legion M+ more than any other version.

[Malkiah]

the fact that both players like you and I can coexist without having too much overlap or conflict with one another indicates to me that Blizzard is doing a pretty decent job providing compelling content for very different subsections of its playerbase.

for now i agree, which is why i'm leery of the new M+ scaling - i'm a decent but thoroughly mediocre player and consider myself as *belonging* in that 15-17 bracket as that's where my skill level and reaction times sit.
(ah the joys of getting older and seeing a spell being cast but your brain and your fingers not being as quick as they used to be to hit that interrupt key and then feeling like a total git)

i know i'll feel compelled to complete 20s to pursue the best gear that is available to me as someone who no longer has the social energy for raiding and dealing with guild shit, so i hope the general gear scaling and sense within the pug community through DF is 20s become the new 15s, because i don't want to be that guy doing his best but dragging down people like you.

[Swnem]

If tanks are healing a lot it's cause the mobs hit hard and trigger the extra healing effect scaling.

So, correct your post, cause what you are asking for is for mob hits to be nerfed.

Healing yourself is mitigation too though. You have a window of time to make it work or you won't heal for much. It's not trololol i'm invincible.

[pinkz]

You shouldn't really base anything on stats and balancing now, and wait for the balancing patch in Dragonflight.

You shouldn't really base anything on stats and balancing in legion, and wait for the balancing patch in BFA

You shouldn't really base anything on stats and balancing in BFA, and wait for the balancing patch in SL

you always have someone assuming blizz will fix what is broken in alpha, beta, and PTR in first weeks, months, first major patch, etc

[Ashana Darkmoon]

complete side note to this conversation, but i am so glad i only play in the 15-17 key range.
i've spent years reading about 'the meta' and accusations of this or that tank being 'useless' or 'required' and i completely understand the paradigm on an upper end where certain pull sizes and tactics are required in order to make the timer, but god that sounds so fucking tedious.

spending all of SL just staying in my lane around 15s and playing all of the tanks regularly (i've run every class through 15s in pugs every week for the entirety of SL) there was never really any substantial difference between the tanks except for ilevel and affixes, and it's remarkable what a different world it is to be playing when class is largely irrelevant.

Really curious how this will work out with 20s being max rewards now. Actually something I'm a little worried about

[Malkiah]

I'm curious, because I started playing the expansion as a brewmaster, just pugging casually, trying to get KSM. It was really brutal because brewmaster didn't have much health and required more healing than other tanks.

brewmaster is definitely weird, it has way less on-demand burst self healing than other tanks (besides prot war) and i always felt that it really lacked a satisfying "oh shit" button like other tanks have where you just become a total beast for a limited time, so whenever a pull went wonky i felt largely useless.

but, i think what really changed it was coming down to getting better at using celestial brew correctly and going "oh jfc, stack crit like a mofo" - and also i guess that their tier was really strong.
honestly i kind of hated playing BrM at the start of SL too and didn't really get the feel for it until after tier sets - so maybe it was just as simple as that?
i think a lot of it too is that it was a good bit into the expansion that it finally clicked how to properly use celestial brew, and how to build up bigger shields by keeping that buff you get from using purify - actually remembering to maintain that buff, and getting the timing down to be able to roll it from one pull to the next to have it when i really needed it made a huge difference in how the class felt to play.

will be interesting to see what happens tanking this week when there's suddenly a drop of 50k in that toon's max health.