[Prot] WoD/Legion Alpha Discussion

[Blizzhoof]

Well I generally average 44-46k on that fight now. That isn't exactly 80% or more. Oh some of the people in my raid? Yes. I can tell you as Praises post right below yours said: Our lock, Rogue, and something else wasn't even near their max for their class. I can tell you we don't have the best dps. We have SOME(a moonkin, spriest, mage). The rest are pretty good.

Basically in my raid yes I look like im beating dps and being at like 90-99% of their dmg. That is because they aren't all the best or even close to it. I am myself not even close to my max on that fight. I still play like shit. My soul reaper usage is awful. I've yet to be able to get that down to using every 6-7sec under 35%.

Actually, you're doing 83% of the damage that Gapezilla is doing there and you both got rank 3s for your class.

Do you think it's fine for a tank to be doing as much damage and healing as you are on live or have been doing on the PTR in testing? Don't get me wrong, it felt great to crush the meter on M Butcher, but it wasn't balanced.

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You're arguing from an imaginary standpoint of where you think things should be and not facing the reality of where things are. Not all DPS are Arcane Mages and they never will be. If anything, Blizzard probably wants to bring them down a bit rather than everybody else up. From your first paragraph and your last, it seems like you just want everybody to be doing the exact same thing. All specs do the same amount of damage in (presumably) every situation. That sounds lame to me.

From a game design standpoint, the reason tanks shouldn't do the same amount of damage as a DPS is because then they would just be upgraded DPS and not a separate role. "You can have two overpowered DPS per raid" is all that raidwide debuff would mean. To clarify, I mean overpowered in the sense that they do the same damage, but have much better survivability. It would feel like shit to be the second string DPSers, and that is an important point. You don't want to marginalize DPS players in that way. Keeping the trinity has worked for them so far and they aren't going to change that. There's no need for them to reinvent the wheel.

Within their design concepts of tanks doing less damage than DPS, they can improve tank gameplay by giving everybody a Harsh Words analog, bringing all tanks into line from a damage perspective, and giving us more specific jobs. I think the third one is incredibly important. If we actually have things to do that are specifically designed for tanks, then we will actually feel more like a different role and less like subpar DPS players.

[Jellospally]

Very true you saw my PTR dps... lol.

The real issue is the other tank specs can't do damage imo. Sure DK could use a like 10% nerf overall if breath stays as is, but the other tank specs should really receive a dmg buff esp paladin so I actually want to play it again

[Ferbian]

Welp, all this talk about the Dks being the OP ones, and here I decided to gear my warrior alt for shits and giggles...

While I know that the Paladin class could use some improvements, and that we're nowhere near optimal, hell I've tanked alongside both monks and DKs so far in BRF and sobbed my way to a mediocre dps ranking while the other tanks go BLARGH and puke up a high dps like it's nothing, is it really going to be so absolutely bad to play come 6.2 that it won't even be worth playing if you're enjoying the class regardless of its current situation? Right now Prot Paladin tanking is some of the most fun I've had in PvE environments... well ever, with exception of yolo master frost DW Dk in Dragon Soul.

But really, am I gonna have to look to gearing and learning to play my DK as blood just because there's absolutely no way Paladins would be enjoyable come 6.2 without some sort of overhaul buff to our damage and survivability to compete, even keeping in mind that I'm not an avid theorycrafter who looks to top the meters everywhere, and don't even consider going into the more 'advanced' active mitigation specs to truly optimise myself? I'm just having fun downing bosses, experiencing Mythic raiding and doing so while going hurrdurr holy shield passive mitigation so I don't have to think even more than I'm already (barely) doing about encounters and my other abilities.

Speaking of which, guild is most likely gonna be doing Kromog Mythic tonight (It's that or Thogar, and I kinda hope it's Kromog), where do I want to time my major defensive cooldowns? I know he's gonna hit like a fucking truck on Mythic so I don't want to be one to halter our raid by not using defensives on the right stuff and flopping over. Do I just do it like I would on heroic while keeping in mind stuff will hit harder, or do I need active cooldown useage for every single ability?

[aGit]

Give back vengeance

Well this is the first time i've ever heard someone talk fondly of vengeance.

[Jellospally]

Well this is the first time i've ever heard someone talk fondly of vengeance.

People disliked it? Sure it wasn't perfect in its last iteration, but it was at least fun. Not exactly fun for the offtank, but ya.

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Speaking of which, guild is most likely gonna be doing Kromog Mythic tonight (It's that or Thogar, and I kinda hope it's Kromog), where do I want to time my major defensive cooldowns? I know he's gonna hit like a fucking truck on Mythic so I don't want to be one to halter our raid by not using defensives on the right stuff and flopping over. Do I just do it like I would on heroic while keeping in mind stuff will hit harder, or do I need active cooldown useage for every single ability?

Its not that bad. Just be careful every stack you get. You want external chain / CD usage under 30% even if you aren't tanking him at the time. Also make sure you get away from each slam other than probably the one on the pull the wreck you.

[aGit]

My point with regards to, in this case Hanno (obviously a top-tier Shadow Priest) not being relevant in terms of the argument was that piss-poor balancing of DPS specs is not an excuse for bad tuning of tank specs. Hanno SHOULD be capable of doing 60k just like an Arcane mage or lolhunter, and SHOULD be ahead of Jellos by the same margin as an Arcane mage...

There are 12 people with public logs who've ever breached 60k mark on gruul. so that's not a very good benchmark

People disliked it? Sure it wasn't perfect in its last iteration, but it was at least fun. Not exactly fun for the offtank, but ya.

if i remember correctly, a lot of people did. my self included, doing absolutely bonkers dps solo tanking garrosh heroic just wasn't fun. for me at least.

[Ferbian]

Its not that bad. Just be careful every stack you get. You want external chain / CD usage under 30% even if you aren't tanking him at the time. Also make sure you get away from each slam other than probably the one on the pull the wreck you.

Alright so nothing more than the usual then with a little more acknowledgement of the amount of damage output Mythic will do as usual. Cheers

[celinamuna]

Well this is the first time i've ever heard someone talk fondly of vengeance.

You must be new to this forum.

[Deleted]

I mean, Blizzhoof, the issue right now isn't that we don't have things that are "specifically designed for tanks to do" per se, it's that all those things involve being punted to bumfuck nowhere for shits and giggles, being out of the range of the boss for 90% of the fight because of retarded debuffs, etc. We feel like a sub-par DPS spec atm because in BRF "bitch job" and "tank job" are essentially synonyms, on top of us gently caressing the boss with our limp dicks more so than actually hurting anyone when we actually are in range - and on top of this every single bit of self-sustainability we had in MoP has been taken away, but tank damage remains basically unchanged, if not even spikier on some bosses.

I think honestly when I think about it I could live with us basically not doing any DPS at all if there was just some way we contributed to the raid right now, but we can't contribute with relevant DPS, and we can't keep ourselves alive. We're like that drooling, developmentally challenged kid at family gatherings that you have to keep an eye on at all times lest he inadvertently choke on his own tongue while nobody is looking. There's literally nothing we do well - we're reliant on DPS to kill shit for us and even with perfect play we're still basically 100% reliant on not having shitlord healers with the attention span of gnats to stay alive in anything that isn't completely trivial content. We're basically just shit with shit filling, and the only reason tanks are even brought to raids in the first place is because YOU HAVE TO FUCKING BRING THEM.

That's really, really, really fucking awful design and shows a complete lack of disregard towards tank players as a whole, especially so when they continue to wantonly gut any sort of emergent gameplay that has any sort of skill-cap or just generally rewards good play. Literally everything they've done in WoD has been a big, fat, "fuck you in particular" to the fun factor of playing a tank. There's just no good reason beyond obligation to the 19 other people you raid with to keep doing it right now.

[sexybeast]

Well this is the first time i've ever heard someone talk fondly of vengeance.

First Time here then?!?

[Hellkung]

Alright so nothing more than the usual then with a little more acknowledgement of the amount of damage output Mythic will do as usual. Cheers

Long Arm go go.

[Ferbian]

Long Arm go go.

Never use anything else when tanking pretty much. I use it for my ret spec when doing old raids for gold cause the runs with no trash are just atrocious (I'm looking at you BWD and ICC upper spire / running back from Festergut / Rotface)

[Accurate]

I mean, Blizzhoof, the issue right now isn't that we don't have things that are "specifically designed for tanks to do" per se, it's that all those things involve being punted to bumfuck nowhere for shits and giggles, being out of the range of the boss for 90% of the fight because of retarded debuffs, etc. We feel like a sub-par DPS spec atm because in BRF "bitch job" and "tank job" are essentially synonyms, on top of us gently caressing the boss with our limp dicks more so than actually hurting anyone when we actually are in range - and on top of this every single bit of self-sustainability we had in MoP has been taken away, but tank damage remains basically unchanged, if not even spikier on some bosses.

I agree 100%. There's literally no reason they can't give tanks something to do on all these fights as they've proven they can do in the past. Tank specific things on each fight that aren't just super annoying wouldn't be hard to come up with at all.

[Deleted]

I agree 100%. There's literally no reason they can't give tanks something to do on all these fights as they've proven they can do in the past. Tank specific things on each fight that aren't just super annoying wouldn't be hard to come up with at all.

See, in my opinion, essentially leashing tanks to healers is part of what's caused such shitty mechanic design. In SoO, there was room for compelling stuff like having to deal with a Shredder away from the raid on Siegecrafter because you could survive that even if you weren't in range of healers 100% of the time. Now, they've designed themselves into a corner because either that shredder now has to hit like soggy bread or you'd just fucking die.

Not only has the insipid changes to tanks resulted in awful core gameplay, it also results, as far as I can see, in very limited mechanics design.

[Deleted]

Within their design concepts of tanks doing less damage than DPS, they can improve tank gameplay by giving everybody a Harsh Words analog, bringing all tanks into line from a damage perspective, and giving us more specific jobs. I think the third one is incredibly important. If we actually have things to do that are specifically designed for tanks, then we will actually feel more like a different role and less like subpar DPS players.

Well there's the issue. Within their current design concept, tank swapping on debuffs, boss positioning and picking up adds are specific jobs. Its worked this way for years and as you've said, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. We do have things to do that are specifically designed for tanks. What's missing is meaningful interaction with those jobs - they don't feel unique to tanking, or different enough from DPS to be meaningful.

The reason why we're seeing tank DPS being brought into discussion is because that's all that's left for you to do as a tank. Current iteration tanking in terms of tank-specific mechanics are very simple. If you've got the gear/healers to survive without having to push the majority of your time spent tanking into survival, you push it into DPS because there isn't anything else for you to do.

Solaire hits it perfectly by saying that there isn't really a way for a tank to contribute to their raid outside of showing up. You're very reliant on your healers to stay alive in relevant content and your damage output is too low to really make any kind of difference. Once you've figured out a boss mechanic and can execute it well enough, that's kind of it. We're back to meter padding as sub-par DPS because there's honestly not much else to do.

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I'm nowhere near an experienced tank, currently only 9/10HC (108k wipe on BH T_T), so my view on the fights will probably different significantly from hardcore mythic tanks. But the only fights that I found I enjoyed tanking on specifically were Blast Furnace and Blackhand. Blast Furnace with moving adds around shields gave me something else to do on picking up adds aside from aggroing them and grouping them for my DPS to blow up. Phase 2 of BH with moving the boss in relation to the siege made me feel like I was able to contribute to my raid group in a meaningful way. Coming from fights like Maidens (zzz) and Kromog (may as well be scripted), these two fights were the first ones on which I had to think a bit and try a few different approaches, and even they were lacking once you got past that.

What we need as tanks is something more than just playing hot potato with debuffs or getting punted around by a boss every now and again. With current design and assuming they stick to it, however, I don't see a way of doing that without making melee DPS outright quit the game - which fights like BH do.

(New account because old computer died and I can't remember any of my details D: )

[Deleted]

I really enjoy tanking right now and on the PTR. I feel like I'm the only one.

[Deleted]

I really enjoy tanking right now and on the PTR. I feel like I'm the only one.

I do!
I love the way paladins play!

Meanwhile Guardian is currently the most obnoxious tanking spec:

- My AoE "rotation" consist of 2 buttons. And actually I could skip 1 of them, and simply spam Thrash.
- Single target is a little better, but it still mostly involves spamming Lacerate. It requires 4 buttons.
- My burst CD [Berserk], is even worse, you will literally just spam Mangle for every GCD, with no real means of ever spending that much rage.
- Snap AoE aggro is non-existent.
- 2-3 target cleave is fine. But even there, the only thing you will have to manage is keeping Lacerate up on all targets.

But it gets things done.
And in 6.2 it will be better in almost everything than my paladin, while it is also much easier to play. The only thing I will miss is HA.

[Ferbian]

I'm nowhere near an experienced tank, currently only 9/10HC (108k wipe on BH T_T), so my view on the fights will probably different significantly from hardcore mythic tanks. But the only fights that I found I enjoyed tanking on specifically were Blast Furnace and Blackhand. Blast Furnace with moving adds around shields gave me something else to do on picking up adds aside from aggroing them and grouping them for my DPS to blow up. Phase 2 of BH with moving the boss in relation to the siege made me feel like I was able to contribute to my raid group in a meaningful way. Coming from fights like Maidens (zzz) and Kromog (may as well be scripted), these two fights were the first ones on which I had to think a bit and try a few different approaches, and even they were lacking once you got past that.

I fucking love me some Blackhand and Blast Furnace tbh. Blast Furnace is an enjoyable fight imo. I don't have any issue with Thogar and Orgorger either personally.

[Deleted]

I fucking love me some Blackhand and Blast Furnace tbh. Blast Furnace is an enjoyable fight imo. I don't have any issue with Thogar and Orgorger either personally.

Thogar is just a fun fight in general to be honest. Oregorger I found a bit boring on Heroic but a lot more fun on Mythic. We've given him a few tries but will only be going for him tomorrow. From a tank perspective, not counting Mythic, I genuinely enjoyed Heroic progression on those two fights because I had something to do other tank tank and spank.

[trystero]

I really enjoy tanking right now and on the PTR. I feel like I'm the only one.

You seem to be around here at least. What is it that appeals to you (this is a serious question, not being sarcastic)?