What's your opinion on active mitigation? Do you think it was the right direction?

[Triceron]

However, my complaint is that all damage mitigations are the same. All tank specs stand there and press a button to mitigate a boss' unavoidable tankbuster strike. Master swordsmen warriors/prot paladins/blood DKs can't riposte that enemy's attack and deal heavy damage. Monks and Demon Hunters can't leap away and dodge that heavy hitting attack.

Unfortunately WoW just doesn't have that 'active dodge' component that many other games like Dark Souls or GW2 has. Nor should it. Tank position is crucial to stay as static as possible, else you screw the melee DPS trying to maintain their rotations, or even risk turning a boss who cleaves melee. Any dodging mechanic would have to be static positioned and merely visual, like a monk side stepping or DH doing a vertical vault in the air.

[Stickiler]

a system like FF11 where your character is autoattacking and you only press a button once every 20 or 30 seconds to do something meaningful, like a hard hitting attack that hits for a huge chunk of the target's HP, or casting a fire spell when the enemy becomes vulnerable to fire damage, or using a heal on someone, etc, would be better gameplay.

That sounds unbelievably boring. I'll never advocate for the 2-300 APM gameplay of something like Fortnite build mode, but where WoW sits right now, which is around 50-90 APM(Based on my Mythic raid teams last few weeks of logs), is a nice value where you're always doing something, but not so overwhelming as to feel like you're playing Flight of the Bumblebee on Piano.

[Triceron]

I know you had no way of knowing this, given you haven't tanked since MoP, but the 50% Paladin DR referenced is exactly what you asking for in terms of "gear and prepwork", because the % DR is from the Paladin mastery, so you can make that DR weaker or stronger based on how much mastery you choose/are able to work in to your gear. Honestly, I'd be very surprised if it approaches 50%, as I'm not aware of any short duration DR that approaches that value.

Mastery changed a lot from when I played. I liked the synergy it had with passives and procs. I'm not a big fan of it being tied to active mitigation, on principle. Part of that stat weight becomes 'risk reward', scaling better for those who can use it better while being 'wasted' for players who don't.

I think the skill should focus on raid management ( interrupts, tank swaps, positioning) rather than keeping buffs up to stay alive. The way I see it, Active Mitigation directly contributes to tuning encounter difficulty and bosses 'hitting harder than they should' because there is an expectation for you to skillfully upkeep your mitigation, rather than it being saved for situational use like it was prior to MoP.

That being said, I'm also aware of the flaws of pre-MoP tanking too. Guardian was a damage sponge and Dodge tank. Lucky dodge chains and the healer has nothing to do. Bad luck and the healer is ooming or overhealing and wasting mana. IMO that was in part to poor itemization back in the day. The lack of stat options like no crushing blow protection or lacking block and parry and having to wear Rogue gear and PVP gear for the raw AGI for dodge was quite limiting. Mastery certainly helped give options. Versatility seems good to me too, on paper.

[GothamCity]

True active mitigation creates a really great skill gap between tanks, similar to complex rotations create skill gaps in dps. Issue with "today's" active mitigation is it is more or less up 100% of the time. Take guardians, they actually have multiple stacks up 100% of the time and a big part of their gearing strategy is to reach the next 100% stack uptime. Barring a few missteps, most tanks have aimed for 100% uptime on active mitigation. So it's really just a rotation that if you fail at, you die. The rotations are also incredibly simple compared to dps, so it's not like it's a challenge to keep up AM.

There's been a few AM attempts which actually had interesting gameplay, mainly when you couldn't have perfect uptime so the great skill line was using your AM when it was actually needed to weaken attacks. There was a phase during, I think BFA?, where a few tanks had the choice between physical or magical AM skills and that was a massive skill gap as you couldn't just macro ironfur to every attack and forget about it.

Recently tank survival has been a 'tbc/LK/Cata' feel to me, where you do your rotation, keep up your AM as part of your rotation, and you have a set of short and long cooldown defensives that you can strategically use to survive difficult situations.

MoP brewmaster is a really good example, as you had to balance keeping up shuffle to increase stagger along with managing purifying the stagger, both which consumed chi. You also could balance mastery, haste, and crit stats which would lean towards different play styles. You actually really want to know the incoming damage profile as over purifying can cause shuffle to drop which increases your damage taken quite a lot. But if you're coming out of an enrage or wombo-combo, it can be a good idea to dump into purify and hold off on shuffling.

BM today has changed this into a more complex rotation for dps, but now you just have charges of purifying brew for AM. There's a small skill gap between when to actually purify, but simply using it right before charge 2 comes off CD is 80% of the game. The last 20% is when to use that reserved charge most effectively. But you can just run a simple WA and when it goes 'red' just pop charge 2 and you're probably 95% of the way there.

[Ghostile]

Well can you tank effectively without relying on active mitigation (sans oh shit buttons), or is there a significant gap in performance between using it and not?

IMO, the more the game is designed around active mitigation being necessary, the more it takes away from situational/raid awareness.

tbf, tanks barely need to look at their screens before the last few heroic bosses.

[Triceron]

tbf, tanks barely need to look at their screens before the last few heroic bosses.

I'm sure addons (raid warnings) don't help either, I feel like they take away from the Tank's duty completely.

[Ghostile]

I'm sure addons (raid warnings) don't help either, I feel like they take away from the Tank's duty completely.

I mean sure, having a WA that tells you to press taunt is helpful when you're looking at a series on your other screen and not your focus frame for stacks.
But besides Mugzee and Gally, tanking doesn't take much situational awareness to begin with. Which is kinda shame.

[Triceron]

I mean sure, having a WA that tells you to press taunt is helpful when you're looking at a series on your other screen and not your focus frame for stacks.
But besides Mugzee and Gally, tanking doesn't take much situational awareness to begin with. Which is kinda shame.

There's two ways I look at that.

Either it's intentionally simple, like a gear check or a faceroll boss, or it's just a poorly designed encounter for Tanks. I think simple fights are necessary, and having every fight be a complex dance would be overwhelming for every boss. We need to have a balance of both. But if it's like a raid has nothing worth keeping you on your toes or at the very least aware of the raid, then that should be addressed. I personally think UI awareness should be minimal, at best. That type of gameplay is suited for Heals, where their entire gameplay is dedicated to managing health bars, resources and buffs. IMO, a Tank should be strictly focused on reacting to everything the Boss or Encounter has to offer.

[Ghostile]

There's two ways I look at that.

Either it's intentionally simple, like a gear check or a faceroll boss, or it's just a poorly designed encounter for Tanks. I think simple fights are necessary, and having every fight be a complex dance would be overwhelming for every boss. We need to have a balance of both. But if it's like a raid has nothing worth keeping you on your toes or at the very least aware of the raid, then that should be addressed. I personally think UI awareness should be minimal, at best. That type of gameplay is suited for Heals, where their entire gameplay is dedicated to managing health bars, resources and buffs. IMO, a Tank should be strictly focused on reacting to everything the Boss or Encounter has to offer.

Gallywix is great for this! The tank switches happen for 2 reasons. Either because the frontal that has to hit half the raid happened, or because of the bombs that spawn and have to be clicked by the tank.

[Tech614]

Monks and Demon Hunters can't leap away and dodge that heavy hitting attack.

laughs in rookery last boss tank buster where you can do exactly this.

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I'm sure addons (raid warnings) don't help either, I feel like they take away from the Tank's duty completely.

I can assure you, the voice pack telling me to taunt isn't any easier than looking at raid frames and knowing to taunt at X stacks. It's just QoL.

The problem with raid tanking is that it's boring and mostly mindless to survive unless you are doing mythic at the bleeding edge. So tank skill expression in raids just becomes your dps parse because that's really all there is and this is the way it has been since even the early days of raid tanking.

There where a few gimmick strats in the past with solo tanking bosses that make things interesting, but blizzard has mostly killed that. Survival check in this game really only comes in high M+ keys.

[Triceron]

I can assure you, the voice pack telling me to taunt isn't any easier than looking at raid frames and knowing to taunt at X stacks. It's just QoL.

That's kind of the problem I'm pointing out.

Back in the day, it was the Tank's job to be Raid Leader, to be the voice pack telling the raid when to be ready for shit to happen.

There where a few gimmick strats in the past with solo tanking bosses that make things interesting, but blizzard has mostly killed that.

Sad to hear. I have fond memories of tanking throughout Vanilla -> Cata, and I think encounter design was generally good for tanking even if some fights were literally just staring at a bosses' toes waiting for a swap. I play Guardian Druid though, so I always had more raid utility like innervate/bres to offer in moments of reprieve, or staying back and using stampeding roar to help stragglers get into position. That's kinda how I see things should offer more of. More Raid utility, more tools to help others deal with sticky situations. Not enough to make it a full role of babysitting every player, but enough to feel like you have some control over protecting others beyond taunts and interrupts.

[Tech614]

That's kind of the problem I'm pointing out.

Back in the day, it was the Tank's job to be Raid Leader, to be the voice pack telling the raid when to be ready for shit to happen.



Sad to hear. I have fond memories of tanking throughout Vanilla -> Cata, and I think encounter design was generally good for tanking even if some fights were literally just staring at a bosses' toes waiting for a swap. I play Guardian Druid though, so I always had more raid utility like innervate/bres to offer in moments of reprieve, or staying back and using stampeding roar to help stragglers get into position. That's kinda how I see things should offer more of. More Raid utility, more tools to help others deal with sticky situations. Not enough to make it a full role of babysitting every player, but enough to feel like you have some control over protecting others beyond taunts and interrupts.

It should never have been a tank specific job to raid lead, in fact it's a last option if they are the only viable raid leader. You can barely see shit tanking some bosses, you make an absolute terrible raid leader compared to a ranged or healer.

While it was common for tanks to be raid leaders back then, it was mostly because they took that responsibility and no one else wanted to do it. Not because they where the best role to be doing that job.

[Triceron]

It should never have been a tank specific job to raid lead, in fact it's a last option if they are the only viable raid leader. You can barely see shit tanking some bosses, you make an absolute terrible raid leader compared to a ranged or healer.

While it was common for tanks to be raid leaders back then, it was mostly because they took that responsibility and no one else wanted to do it. Not because they where the best role to be doing that job.

Also because they set the pace. Raids back then were a little more like what Mythic Plus is today. You all go at the Tank's pace, and the encounters were direct enough for everyone to follow simple instructions. Today I feel like the designers tend to overly design Raid encounters to deal with the addons that spell out everything.

[Ghostile]

Also because they set the pace. Raids back then were a little more like what Mythic Plus is today. You all go at the Tank's pace, and the encounters were direct enough for everyone to follow simple instructions. Today I feel like the designers tend to overly design encounters to deal with the addons that spell out everything.

Eh, you can get 3 bosses into the mythic raid before hitting a boss where an addon makes your life much easier.
The journal and seeing how it plays is enough for over 90% of the content.

[Ereb]

Also because they set the pace. Raids back then were a little more like what Mythic Plus is today. You all go at the Tank's pace, and the encounters were direct enough for everyone to follow simple instructions. Today I feel like the designers tend to overly design Raid encounters to deal with the addons that spell out everything.

So it's too easy and too hard at the same time???? You admit to not playing the game how can you think you can offer an opinion of what raid encounter designs are, aren't, or what they should be? As the GM and RL of a CE guild I love the raids in wow and have for multiple seasons now. DF was amazing for raiding and TWW has been no less awesome. Sure broodtwister sucked, but overall it's been W after W after W.

[Tech614]

Also because they set the pace. Raids back then were a little more like what Mythic Plus is today. You all go at the Tank's pace, and the encounters were direct enough for everyone to follow simple instructions. Today I feel like the designers tend to overly design Raid encounters to deal with the addons that spell out everything.

This sounds like you watched the classic gameplay, as in classic release not actual vanilla cause no there sure as hell wasn't no "pace" and it wasn't even remotely close to M+. Watching some solved content in classic being speed ran is not the same way we did it back then lmao. We just threw up some CC markers and mindlessly facerolled the trash while most of the raid was AFK like lazy fucks.

Hell, raid trash currently is harder than it ever was back then it's still a joke but you can definitely wipe if half the group is AFK and you aren't death run skipping. It's closer to M+ than old raid trash which was just some mindless shit comparable to current LFR trash.

[Triceron]

So it's too easy and too hard at the same time???? You admit to not playing the game how can you think you can offer an opinion of what raid encounter designs are, aren't, or what they should be? As the GM and RL of a CE guild I love the raids in wow and have for multiple seasons now. DF was amazing for raiding and TWW has been no less awesome. Sure broodtwister sucked, but overall it's been W after W after W.

I can offer an opinion based on my experience in vanilla to Cata, is that offensive to you? I framed everything as opinion, so what is the problem here?

Sure, you can think it is win after win. Thanks for sharing your opinion. I still disagree, and we can agree to disagree. No need to gatekeep, right?

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This sounds like you watched the classic gameplay, as in classic release not actual vanilla cause no there sure as hell wasn't no "pace" and it wasn't even remotely close to M+. Watching some solved content in classic being speed ran is not the same way we did it back then lmao. We just threw up some CC markers and mindlessly facerolled the trash while most of the raid was AFK like lazy fucks.

Hell, raid trash currently is harder than it ever was back then it's still a joke but you can definitely wipe if half the group is AFK and you aren't death run skipping. It's closer to M+ than old raid trash which was just some mindless shit comparable to current LFR trash.

Nope. I don't watch WoW, retail or classic.

[Ereb]

I can offer an opinion based on my experience in vanilla to Cata, is that offensive to you? I framed everything as opinion, so what is the problem here?

Sure, you can think it is win after win. Thanks for sharing your opinion. I still disagree, and we can agree to disagree. No need to gatekeep, right?

Ain't no gatekeeping here you are free to have an opinion just like I am free to call it out for the absolute ignorance that it is. The only person seemingly offended here is you, and no matter how upset you get it won't change the fact that your opinions are irrelevant because you have no idea about the subject matter at hand. Your experience from vanilla to cata translates to absolutely nothing regarding today's game and you offer no valuable insight into anything possible relating to raid design.

At least play the game within this decade if you want to be taken seriously in the slightest. That is my opinion.

[Malkiah]

my issue with active mitigation isn't even with the thing itself, it's with the broader scope of what it represents in something that has been an increasing part of the group/raid design in wow: everything is implemented in such a way where it's either perfect execution = win, or it's mistake = fail, and there is a constantly shrinking window of opportunity for recovery within the design space.

so you have a raid boss... or an M+ boss, or even a trash mob, whatever, and the strength of its damage output is enough to kill a tank without outside healing.
ok so then you have tanks and their passive mitigation, and that is X% higher than not-tank passive mitigation, or even active mitigation.
but now you put active mitigation on top of that, and we loop back to the first line where mob damage output has to be enough to kill a tank who have active mitigation without outside healing, and that basically means it one-shots anything that isn't a tank with active mitigation.
so your tank dies, and that's just it... wipe. no opportunity for recovery, no window for having a mistake and overcoming it.

i don't like a game design space where the ability to stumble but then recover has been removed, i personally am not a fan of perfect execution of a predetermined sequence being the only viable path to victory. there's a reason i like action RPG games and not DDR.
so, i think AM is bad because it contributes to an escalating game play where you can't have a hiccup without it resulting in complete failure.
obviously, i mean that generally speaking... of course there are times and situations where a tank dies or a healer dies or whatever and you manage to finish off the encounter. but a dps dying is manageable, a healer dying can be compensated by the right classes, but if your tank dies when a boss is at 50% you are not going to kill that boss, period, and a tank is the only class where that outcome is basically assured.
if AM didn't exist and the gap between tank and not-tank mitigation were closer (and if dps defensives didn't generally completely suck) you could have more chances to swing a stumble into a win, and i'd like to see more of that in general.

[Tech614]

my issue with active mitigation isn't even with the thing itself, it's with the broader scope of what it represents in something that has been an increasing part of the group/raid design in wow: everything is implemented in such a way where it's either perfect execution = win, or it's mistake = fail, and there is a constantly shrinking window of opportunity for recovery within the design space.

so you have a raid boss... or an M+ boss, or even a trash mob, whatever, and the strength of its damage output is enough to kill a tank without outside healing.
ok so then you have tanks and their passive mitigation, and that is X% higher than not-tank passive mitigation, or even active mitigation.
but now you put active mitigation on top of that, and we loop back to the first line where mob damage output has to be enough to kill a tank who have active mitigation without outside healing, and that basically means it one-shots anything that isn't a tank with active mitigation.
so your tank dies, and that's just it... wipe. no opportunity for recovery, no window for having a mistake and overcoming it.

i don't like a game design space where the ability to stumble but then recover has been removed, i personally am not a fan of perfect execution of a predetermined sequence being the only viable path to victory. there's a reason i like action RPG games and not DDR.
so, i think AM is bad because it contributes to an escalating game play where you can't have a hiccup without it resulting in complete failure.
obviously, i mean that generally speaking... of course there are times and situations where a tank dies or a healer dies or whatever and you manage to finish off the encounter. but a dps dying is manageable, a healer dying can be compensated by the right classes, but if your tank dies when a boss is at 50% you are not going to kill that boss, period, and a tank is the only class where that outcome is basically assured.
if AM didn't exist and the gap between tank and not-tank mitigation were closer (and if dps defensives didn't generally completely suck) you could have more chances to swing a stumble into a win, and i'd like to see more of that in general.

That's not even how mob damage works, and active mitigation is wildly different based on tank specs. You have everything from a BDK which takes massive damage and only works by their self healing scaling with damage in take, you have prot wars that are walls that take little damage and have little self healing, you have prot paladin and VDH which are like a mix of these things, you have brewmaster that takes full damage but converts it into a DoT that they can regularly clear a % of. So no raid bosses are not tuned to one shot tanks "without AM" because then they would just one shot BDKs or put some unhealable stagger on a brewmaster because those specs only work by mitigating and healing damage after it comes. Now that happens at a certain point in M+ but that's just the nature of an infinitely scaling difficulty mode, eventually the scaling just one shots a BDK but this does not exist in raids.

You also absolutely can recover from tank deaths. You can kite stuff and get a battle res up for the tank in a M+ and in a raid it just means the other tank is going to take more damage for a bit until you can get a res up. It's slightly more punishing than a healer or dps dying but it should be since the entire point of the role is surviving damage.