Upcoming Tanking Changes Compilation, Blue Posts

[Boubouille]

Upcoming Tanking Changes - Compiled list
The tanking changes have been updated, I compiled all the changes from the past and new posts in a nice list.

Here are a few additional changes we are making which will be applied in patch 4.0.3a:

• These changes are all slated for patch 4.0.3a when the shattering of Azeroth takes place, and are not currently implemented on live realms. Some of them may be active in the beta test – the Savage Defense change for example was applied via a hotfix to the beta realms recently.
  
  

Death Knight (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Icebound Fortitude -- Damage reduction changed from 30% to 20% (or 60% to 50% talented). Cooldown still 2 minutes. Duration still 12 seconds.
  
  

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Savage Defense is massively overpowered on beta and has been dealt with accordingly. Many of the reports of beta raid bosses two-shotting tanks were because that was how much damage the bosses needed to do in order to challenge Feral tanks. With less damage absorbed, the boss damage can be adjusted downwards. We've reduced the multiplier for attack power on the absorption effect (from 65% to 35%, still modified by mastery) and it no longer procs from periodic critical hits.
  
  
• Bear Form -- Stamina bonus lowered from 20% to 10% and Heart of the Wild health bonus from 10% to 6%. Bear health should be close to plate tank health with this change.
  
  
• Survival Instincts -- Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Duration still 12 seconds.
  
  

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Holy Shield will be changed to increase block value by 10% (40% total) instead of increasing block chance by 15%. Since this will cause Mastery to become more valuable, the amount of block granted by Mastery will be reduced to 2.25% block chance per point of Mastery, down from 3%.
  
  
• Paladin tanks are not intended to go cap block as fast as they can. It’s fine if you want to do that, but we don’t treat it as “the new defense cap” and we don’t balance paladins assuming they have a 100% block chance. That is something the community identified as being not only possible, but likely, and one of the reasons we changed the way block works for paladins.
  
  
• Guardian of Ancient Kings -- Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown still 2 minutes (talented). Duration still 12 seconds.
  
  

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• At level 85, the value of Shield Block decreases as block value generated by Mastery increases. To remedy this, we will convert overflow of block + avoidance that exceeds 100% into critical block chance instead. Along with that change, Shield Block will be reduced to +25% block chance (down from +100%), but this will still yield a net buff for most warriors. Also in response to this change, the amount of block and critical block provided by Mastery will be equalized. Finally, Mastery will now grant 1.5% block chance per point.
  
  
• The new warrior Mastery is 1.5% block and 1.5% critical block per point of mastery.
  
  
• Shield Block will spill over into critical block if any portion of the 25% would have been wasted because your block + dodge + parry is so high already. If you are somehow always over 100% (which will be pretty hard now), you only get the critical block when Shield Block is up. The intent is to make sure Shield Block isn't wasted, not to make sure you have mastery coming out your ears (or any other orifice in the facial region).
  
  
• Shield Block is not intended to be a magic damage cooldown (neither is Blood Shield, which also is physical damage only). We don’t want to duplicate the exact same ability on every tank when we can avoid it. Bosses generally don’t spam out a lot of magic damage on short cooldowns. On the other hand, Shield Block has a much higher up-time than Barkskin. We still believe the Cataclysm raiding environment is going to be a lot less centered around tanks dying to spike damage than players currently experience at level 80. Mitigating a lot of damage to save healer mana can be very valuable in Cataclysm.
  
  
• Vigilance -- No longer reduces damage by 3%, but will still reset Taunt cooldown and provide Vengeance for the warrior.
  
  
• Glyph of Shield Wall -- Now buffs damage reduction by 10% (to 60%), but only adds 1 minute of cooldown.
  
  
• Shield Wall -- Damage reduction changed from 40% to 50%. Cooldown still 2 minutes (talented). Duration still 12 seconds.
  
  

Blue Posts

Raid Heroic Mode
You will have to complete the Normal mode of a raid dungeon once before you can switch to Heroic the next week. (Source)

Beta Raid Difficuly
Normal mode raids are currently too easy (with few exceptions). You'll likely be seeing substantial buffs across the board in the next beta patch. (Source)

Removal of the Zul'gurub instance in 4.0.3a
We feel Zul'Gurub will serve the updated old world much better as a new questing area (and potentially a space for future dungeons), rather than an irrelevant instance. We understand there are some cool flavor items there, but that alone just wasn't justification enough to keep the place walled off so a very tiny fraction of the playerbase can continue farming endlessly for these items. One day maybe these items will make their return when the timing and implementation feels right. (Source)

Is it possible to increase the droprate of ZG mounts before it's removed?
No. (Source)

Tanking
Dragons damage / Magic Tanking
If Deathwing is anything like our current dragons, he'll do 60% physical damage and 40% magical damage. Dragon breaths never take you down to 100% of your health, so if the tank dies during them, it's probably because she wasn't topped off before hand (from all the physical damage before hand).

We got rid of the magical tank niche early in LK development because it wasn't a strong enough niche and it wasn't fun for groups to have to swap MTs. All four tanks are tanking Lich King and all four tanks will be tanking Deathwing. (Source)

RNG Deaths in WotLK
I agree it worked that way in Lich King. Tanks were often at risk of dying within 2-3 boss hits, often faster than a heal could land. In that environment anything that can prolong your life at all is very valuable, and by extension anything not related to reliably prolonging your life (parry for instance) is not attractive.

This is also something we have set out to change. I understand that you personally don't believe we will change it, and since your vision of what the world will be like is at odds with our vision, it is unsurprising that the changes we make to bring about our vision might not make sense to you.

But if healer mana doesn't matter, our whole combat design collapses. Healers won't value cheap heals. Since mana won't constrain them, overhealing will be common, so they may start devaluing crit as well. DPS specs won't value talents that help them stay alive. And the only way to challenge raids will once again be to clobber tanks so hard that any missed heals will result in tank death. It doesn't have to be this way, and in fact it wasn't this way for much of the game. We were watching the new Nefarian fights and recalling the old Nefarian fights where, in the absence of a berserk timer, the fight could really last for a long time -- maybe 20 minutes or more -- if you had a lot of deaths. The tank wasn't in much danger of RNG dying, so as long as the healers didn't run out of mana, the raid could keep the fight going nearly indefinitely.

As we said above, in the beta raid tests, druids were easy to keep alive and the other tanks were dying in two hits. That wasn't the design we were going for, so we brought the druid down to the other tank levels and adjusted the damage accordingly. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Vengeance and Savage Defense
Vengeance isn't a problem with Savage Defense in our minds. In fact, it works out well because it lets Savage Defense roughly scale the same way blocking scales, rather than being overpowered for 5-player dungeons or underpowered in raids. When you're getting hit the hardest (hard enough to stack Vengeance a lot), you're also blocking a lot.

Savage Defense was just mitigating too much damage in raids though, which is why we have nerfed it. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Shield Block
When those scary moments come, you use Shield Wall. Or Last Stand. Or both. They are often telegraphed far in advance, so you can also get Guardian Spirit and all the other healer cooldowns lined up as well. You don't need Shield Block to withstand those big magical hits, in the same way you didn't need it to survive Fusion Punch. That's not what it's for. It is for reducing damage taken over time so that healers expend less mana over the course of the fight and don't run out. Very few bosses hit for only magical damage, so in that sense Shield Block and block and armor for that matter are what allow your healers to make it through an encounter.

We could consider adding a Shield Block glyph in the future that removes the block but adds magic damage reduction instead, but overall I think you guys are way over-freaking out about this. (Source)

Blizzcon Pre-Sale Shipping Delays

Due to an error in our shipping process, BlizzCon items ordered during the pre-sale have been delayed by approximately two weeks. We're expecting all items to now be shipped by November 3.

The intent of the pre-sale is of course to allow you to buy your items ahead of time, and get them as close to BlizzCon as possible, if not before. These issues, while unforeseen, are entirely regrettable and we apologize for any inconvenience they've caused. We're working to get you your goodies as soon as we possibly can.

Thank you for your patience.

[Rellekk]

more tank changes plox

[Eixel]

Is it possible to increase the droprate of ZG mounts before it's removed?
No.

lol, damn.

[Zagnaphein]

And the nerf keeps comming...

[Ultima]

And the nerf keeps comming...

You are thinking of it incorrectly. It makes more sense to "nerf" (Read: Balance out) the tank than to increase boss damage. They did that in Wrath, and what happened? Healers had to become god mode players from the first week of Ulduar.

They are heading in the right direction and making the appropriate changes in my eyes. Are they done? No. Did they say they were done? Nope.

Rock on.

[Kaosadvokit]

Lol, pre-sale. Exactly why I didn't order anything and just bought it there.

[sneeuwplanker]

Savage Defense is massively overpowered on beta and has been dealt with accordingly. Many of the reports of beta raid bosses two-shotting tanks were because that was how much damage the bosses needed to do in order to challenge Feral tanks. With less damage absorbed, the boss damage can be adjusted downwards. We've reduced the multiplier for attack power on the absorption effect (from 65% to 35%, still modified by mastery) and it no longer procs from periodic critical hits.

So what does it proc from now? random 15-30% proc chance? on getting hit? what?

[Deleted]

I'm confused it used to be Feral were mitigation tanks. We had higher hp, higher armor and lower avoidance. Well suited for spiky fights. Now, they brought down hp and armor to be on par with other tanks and done nothing to our avoidance. Are they relying on Savage Defence to fill in for the missing avoidance? Since the changes, I don't think it will anymore.

[Deos]

More swiping tanks homogenisation.. ftl.. All the classes are gonna feel the same while tanking.. :[ What's the point in having 4 class tanks then when in essence you all do the same, who cares if that shiled wall is being called icebound fortitude or guardian kings, or having shiled block vs savage defense, when it does exactly the same. Same damage reduction, same cooldown, same duration, same scaling...

What's the point in playing a bear tank then? If it feels and plays the same as warrior but misses all the glory of shiny armor, badass weapons and shiled, rather being stuck in the same form from level 10 to infinity and beyond.. I could come up with excuse before, "im feral tank because i like its unique combat style and i love to rely on huge HP pool rather than avoidance", now i have nothing to put in defense of bear :[

[Deleted]

Savage Defense is massively overpowered on beta and has been dealt with accordingly. Many of the reports of beta raid bosses two-shotting tanks were because that was how much damage the bosses needed to do in order to challenge Feral tanks. With less damage absorbed, the boss damage can be adjusted downwards. We've reduced the multiplier for attack power on the absorption effect (from 65% to 35%, still modified by mastery) and it no longer procs from periodic critical hits.

So what does it proc from now? random 15-30% proc chance? on getting hit? what?

Direct damage crits?

[Squishie]

You are thinking of it incorrectly. It makes more sense to "nerf" (Read: Balance out) the tank than to increase boss damage. They did that in Wrath, and what happened? Healers had to become god mode players from the first week of Ulduar.

They are heading in the right direction and making the appropriate changes in my eyes. Are they done? No. Did they say they were done? Nope.

Rock on.

I think the term nerf is completly wrong in fact. The game is still in beta and is being balanced. If something makes it to live and is then nerfed perhaps some amount of QQ is justifiable. But calling nerf on a beta server is a little redundant.

For all those people getting upset about game changes you are in fact completly right blizzard is picking on you and nerfing the classes you play simply because they don't like you. It's got absolutely nothing to do with game design and balance. And no you are not in the least bit self concieted.

[Hokuto]

So what does it proc from now? random 15-30% proc chance? on getting hit? what?

Direct damage crits only of course, which definitely aren't rare for a bear tank.

[Ultima]

So what does it proc from now? random 15-30% proc chance? on getting hit? what?

From direct critical hits. It just means that your shield will not proc from Lacerate, etc.

edit: Hokuto, nice sniper rifle.

[Deleted]

Direct damage crits only of course, which definitely aren't rare for a bear tank.

Which certainly will be in Beta. Crit chance halves.

[Ultima]

I think the term nerf is completly wrong in fact. The game is still in beta and is being balanced. If something makes it to live and is then nerfed perhaps some amount of QQ is justifiable. But calling nerf on a beta server is a little redundant.

Sorry, I think you missed what my post was responding to (the post above). That's why I used quote marks, since I don't think that is the correct word.

[Deleted]

Gargh, Druid tank nerfs Just when I was enjoying having 80k

[Deleted]

What the hell they've lowered druid hp when thats pritty much all droods are useful for we cant parry block we can only dodge so how is us having the same as a plate tank a good thing now no druid is ever gona be made MT we are just gona be stuck as OT like tbc again YAY!=(

[Shorni]

We feel Zul'Gurub will serve the updated old world much better as a new questing area (and potentially a space for future dungeons), rather than an irrelevant instance. We understand there are some cool flavor items there, but that alone just wasn't justification enough to keep the place walled off so a very tiny fraction of the playerbase can continue farming endlessly for these items. One day maybe these items will make their return when the timing and implementation feels right.

So... remove all classic raids and tbc raids. Cause only "very tiny fraction of the playerdatabase goes there" after cata hits.
What a BS.

[Ultima]

What the hell they've lowered druid hp when thats pritty much all droods are useful for we cant parry block we can only dodge so how is us having the same as a plate tank a good thing now no druid is ever gona be made MT we are just gona be stuck as OT like tbc again YAY!=(

I assume you are a Bear Tank? There's a very helpful guide on our Druid forum, give it a read! (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-4.0.1-edition)

While Paladins and Warriors have abilities you do not have (Parry and Block, just Parry for DKs), you have abilities that they do not to counter/match them. What do you think Savage Defence is for? I can't comprehend how you can complain about having a lack of avoidance when your "Block" had to be brought in-line as it was too powerful. I honestly think you are just skimming the text for number reductions and screaming Witch + Nerf + Sky plummeting.

[Sensa]

Beta Raid Difficuly

Normal mode raids are currently too easy (with few exceptions). You'll likely be seeing substantial buffs across the board in the next beta patch. (Source)

When I suggested the same thing last week..regarding the Paragon Chogall kill...people scoffed at me and said it was because it was Paragon...no it wasn't...it was because the fight was grossly undertuned...I'm glad to see they will be buffing these fights because these new raids made Naxx 2.0 look hard.