Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King
We *will* give you the tools to do it. We just might not give you those tools the same way another class gets them. There are no two-handed tanking weapons, yet I suspect 50% or more of DKs will use two-handed weapons. Neither DKs nor druids have shields. Druids need defense less than other tanks because they can achieve crit immunity. We can do something similar for your damage reduction (bake it into bear form, or put it in a talent are two obvious choices). Now, when you get your leather though, we are assuming you gem and enchant it as a tank would.
I'm sorry we are neglecting paladins on the forums. None of the tanking trees are very far along yet, and ironically the DK ones are probably the most stable. The paladin ones may be the least stable since the class changed so much, so it's hard to offer a lot of comment on specific talents right now. I mention druids a lot because we are talking a lot about them right now. The Arms and Fury warriors recently got some really nice work done on them, so hopefully Prot will follow. (But again I stress we won't know if the talent trees offer all of the threat, mitigation, survivability and tools they need to until we compare endgame tanking more.)
As far as what the Prot warrior brings to a raid, it is true that all tanks bring some ammount of target debuffing. But more importantly, we are in the middle of a pretty big analysis of raid buffs and debuffs. It is a large enough topic that we probably shouldn't muddle up this thread too much of that discussion, but in brief:
The overall goal is that you should want to bring raiders because they are your friends or because they are very good players, not because their buff is so awesome that you can't live without it. We would like you to be able to get all of the big buffs and still have some remaining slots that you can fill how you want (you know assuming you have enough healers and CC or whatever). We would like to get things to where no single spec always justifies a raid spot because their buff is impossible to replace or live without. (
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Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King and Itemization
No class should need an awesome set of tank gear for a L76 dungeon. Once you get close to 80 and start to talk about heroics, then you absolutely need some good blue tanking gear, and that kind of stuff is available as drops and quest rewards.
Our early tests suggest DK mitigation, avoidance and health aren't far below other tanks (assuming those tanks are using similar gear and aren't coming in with Sunwell epics). Their avoidance tends to be a little higher and stamina a little lower, but not significantly (and I should stress that these are very preliminary tests). It could be that the mobs just hit too hard.
One change we made recently is baking in the old bonus from Blessing of Salvation into tanking forms. Up until now you were pretty much just doing without the old Salv because there was no way to replace it, and many raiding guilds will tell you that buff is (was) mandatory. Now you get it for free.
That obviously won't help survival much, but it will affect threat enormously. (
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Druid (
Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Feral Tanking and Itemization
I totally get this. Druids won't be popular tanks if everyone knows them as the OOM tank. When I say "big health pool" I'm not talking about 30% more than a warrior, and I'm not even sure that's the route we'll go. But since the "big health" idea generates a lot of discussion, I'll walk you through our thought process.
Druids are going to have a harder time hitting the armor cap in Lich King largely because there is no leather tanking gear, and virtually no bonus armor at all (except on a few pieces like rings and necks). Now we can't just make druids do without armor, or they won't compete with other tanks. We can't just bake the armor into Dire Bear Form though, or we risk making resto druids even better in PvP. So when I have mentioned big health pools, that is partially because we're trying to solve the problem where druids need armor but can't get it. Big health is a way to do with less armor, but it's not a total fix for the situation, it definitely has drawbacks, and it doesn't mean 30% more health and 30% less armor. If I had to guess, all of the tanks will end up having pretty similar endgame stats, minus obvious things like block.
Keep in mind how good a well-geared druid tank would be in live if we hadn't added Sunwell Radiance. It is surprisingly easy to make bears too good or not good enough. We have to tread carefully.
But we haven't changed the design of wanting bears to be able to MT. And that doesn't mean technically they can MT but all the healers complain and as soon as the warrior logs on, you eagerly swap him back in. MT means MT. (
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Hunter (
Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Roar of Sacrifice making hunters invulnerable / Pet survavibility in WotLK
Obviously Roar of Sacrifice is a bug.
The burst issue is one worth more discussion. We have hesitated giving resilience to pets because to some extent we do want them to be killable. When you're the other team all ganging up to kill a pet while enduring tons of damage from the hunter, it can feel like a long time, and then the hunter just turns around and brings the pet back.
One thing we're not crazy about is the pet-as-guided-missile strategy that some hunters seem to employ (send your pet in, then ignore it the rest of the fight.) You should want to heal your pet and otherwise try to keep it alive and not just use it as a delaying tactic.
Now I'm not saying pets are already too tough, just that we don't want to get them that way, which is why we haven't gone the resilience route yet. But I would be interested in hearing more discussion about how much more health a pet would need to feel like they weren't getting one-shotted. Alternately, maybe talents that affected chance to be crit (or granted something on being crit) would be more appropriate. If in the end you think resilience is the only thing that will keep the pet alive, let us know that too. (
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Pet's Charge changes
It's not a game balance issue really. We wanted to make the tanking pets feel different from the DPS pets by having one Charge and one Intervene.
It might make sense to swap Dash / Dive with Charge / Swoop though for tanking pets. They might have to be on the same cooldown.... We'll think about it. (
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Wolf: Furious Howl
I'm not sure why Furious Howl had such a low range. My suspicion is it just hadn't been touched in a long time. It's 40 now. (
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Paladin (
Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Protection paladins in WotLK
It's great to see your feedback on protection paladins. This is really useful because we feel we may still have further work to do on them for Wrath. Because of all the paladin changes we've made, the prot paladin is probably a lot less good to go than other tanks -- especially the Death Knight which has had to receive a lot of attention since it's a brand new class. We're looking forward to seeing how protadins are looking in the endgame, because until then we won't really know if you've got all the stats and tools you'll need to do fully champion your intended role and speciality. (
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Death Knight (
Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Scourge Strike / Upcoming changes
I am personally not convinced Annihilation is mandatory. If you remove diseases with Obliterate, you can reapply them again with Icy Touch and Plague Strike. The only time it feels really necessary is if you are Frost and want to get two Oblits in a row, or you are in a raid sitation where you can't afford to let Ebon Plague fall off.
At this point, we are leaning towards Scourge Strike as an Obliterate replacer that hits for Shadow damage and doesn't remove diseases. With it, you wouldn't need Annihilation as Unholy so that point is moot. You would still have Plague Strike (and Blood Plague in general) for the hot removal effect.
Desecration would be changed to work off Plague Strike, since the compulsion is to open with it anyway. All other talents that currently affect Plague Strike and Scourge Strike would continue to do so.
Then we'd add a talent that converts Blood Runes used in Blood Boil to Death Runes. Blood Boil's AE damage feels good for Unholy. It has already been changed to a non-taunt with no cooldown, so it is basically an AE Blood Strike.
With this new talent you could do:
Icy Touch (F) -> Plague Strike (U) -> Scourge Strike (FU) -> Scourge Strike (FU)
That one is a little like Frost. But with Epidemic, you could sometimes do:
Scourge Strike (FU) x3
And if you had Corpse Explosion and / or Bone Armor, you could sometimes do:
Icy Touch (F) -> Plague Strike (U) -> U -> U -> Scourge Strike (FU)
The Unholy Blight idea is interesting too, but we finally got the current version in a place where it feels fun, so we are inclined to keep it there. (
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Heart Strike and Improved Icy Touch bugs
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Heart Strike's debuff wasn't working correctly. There was also a bug with Improved Icy Touch increasing haste instead of decreasing it. (
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