Ask The Devs #9 - Tanking

[Deleted]

main warrior alt paladin tank. both raiding heroic content. I was hugely disapointed not to see the qaustion about warrior threat being so much lower then paladins, and paladins being lower then DKs. it'd dispicable how much threat DKs generate on the pull with abiities that cannot be dodged/parried while us paladins/warriors go "aww hell CS missed twice in a row sigh" or "shield slam missed and is not recastable when it misses" etc...misses/parries are really the bane of pull threat, but doing calculations you'd literally have to reforge EVERY peice of gear you have into hit/expertise to even get the 26/8 goal, and that won't even solve the parry problem. I miss when tanks got passive expertise in their tree just for being a class that had to dps from the front all the time. :\

the answer to the vengeance question was also dodgy at best. they said apsolutely nothing whenever someone asks about that. pull threat isn't just dicey for 10 seconds, on my warrior doing everything right on a pull, can simply get unlucky and not have control of threat for a full minute, and you can't taunt when someoen pulls either cause the temp threat is still higher then the person who is already over 110, so you can't taunt until that drops, and hope you're fsat enough not to let that frost dk or ret paladin die. or maybe you strike up a deal with mage buddy to go all out on pull with image up, way pass your threat, then taunt off him for the 1000k lead that gives you.

at least when it comes to aoe though my warrior rapes the Dks face. my single target threat is lowest of 4 tank classes without a doubt but aoe i haven't met a tank class that can beat blood thunder deep wounds build with double dots on everything, all while cleaving and shockwaving and thunderclaping like mad. then that mob that can disarm shields in BoT kills me cause i had all 6 mobs on me (whats up with that anwyays? before 4.1 he'd only disarm weapon, now weapon and shield making tanking him for a warrior/paladin really suck).

/rant

Gonna keep ranting.

It's quite dangerous for a tankswap fight to be a bear, without any vengeance up our mastery doesn't give crap for the first couple of seconds so initial damage on a pull/tank swap is scary shit

[barkles]

wow, some of these questions are REALLY stupid!!! I'd like to see them answer questions from people that actually know their class....

[Deleted]

ooh legendary in 4.3. Looking foreward to that, guessing a Healer item as we just had 2 DPS legendaries in a row and they said it's not gonna be a tanking item

[Freese]

If they have 11.5 million subs world wide, at £9 each that's £1,035,000,000 a year. Just over a billion pounds a year from subs only. That's not taking into account the store, and that's only WoW.

So what have they given us in the last seven months for our billion pounds? 2 recycled dungeons. Even if they only invested 10% per year, that's still 100 million pounds to produce content. 100 million will buy you a LOT of content. Wtf is going on indeed.

Not sure if you heard the news, but 4.2 is about to hit with new content.

[Findme]

Thanks for nothing, sidestepping all the questions.

The best is, the devs believe feral innervate = raid utility? LoL, gg blizz.

The devs have lost the touch with this game....

[Peacemoon]

bear druid’s ability to cast Innervate

WHAT?!

Feral innervate does 20% of their maximum mana, which is usually around 25k, so Feral innervate gives approximately 5k mana.

Incase Blizzard forgot, you nerfed that utility a LONG time ago.

[shadowkras]

3 words
Disa
Poin
Ting

Really, warriors have a reliable self heal now? This FAQ answered nothing. We already knew, from previous blue posts, their position on vengeance, so this faq added nothing.
Why they would answer things that were written on patch notes? Taunts can miss? Interrupts can miss? Seriously, what a waste of space.

Also, bear tanks innervating is laughable at best, did that dev read their own patchnotes?

[Deleted]

Thanks for nothing, sidestepping all the questions.

The best is, the devs believe feral innervate = raid utility? LoL, gg blizz.

The devs have lost the touch with this game....

They could've atleast mentioned our occasionall dps increase when we go into cat, which was nice in 10 mans but doesn't do a whole lot in 25s.

Someone mentioned that people were asking stupid questions and that people should ask smarter questions.
I don't think the devs had a lack of questions to answer, they just chose to answer the ones they wanted and even went as far as putting in a filler question with the taunt to make it look longer.

So I think there are a lot of good questions out there, but they decided not to answer cause they don't have a good answer.

[Snakebite]

come oooooooon rogue legendary

[Roscoe]

"Q: Is there any plan to add a new tank class in the future?"
"A:We don’t see WoW as a game that can support unlimited different class types (and the different talent specs almost behave as full classes these days!"

Don't expect anymore classes in future expansions.

[Cudy]

I like that they totally ignored the 5 man / trash pulls with geared dps and initial agro bits of the vengance question.

The design intent there would have been interesting to know.

I'm guessing it is something like 'always bring a rouge or hunter' or 'oops'.

Currently it seems to me that tank skill is only really a factor in the fist 5 or 10 seconds and one missed shield slam (or equiv) or getting 'lucky' and dodging a bunch (and thus not stacking veng/getting rage) can defeat even perfect tank play... but getting hit and exp isn't worth it because after about 20 seconds vengance makes threat a non issue even if all you do is spam devastate (or equiv) while you watch tv for the rest of the fight.

Personally I'd rather they balance us to wear threat stats and drop the vengance crap.

[swills]

You mean the druid innervate that is gives enough mana for ONE spell or the rebirth we have to leave form for, thus taking substantial damage and placing the rebirthed player in clave position? Great comparison.

I agree about the Innervate bit, but it's piss easy in most every fight to safely combat rez someone while tanking. Magmaw head phase, Chimaeron Feud, Dragons during phase change, Cho'Gall on tank swap, etc, etc. Druid Combat rez isn't as easy as DKs' but then the Druid's rez is also infinitely safer due to coming back with full health (= glyph).

[Wyattbw09]

they like to penalize healers for people screwing up, like standing in fire and pulling aggro, this is where the devs are messing up, penalize the people not the healer, penalize the healers for making poor healing chocies like spamming flash heal or delaying to heal raid damage.

Healing a DPS who is standing in the fire, pulling aggro is a poor healing choice and is the penalty to the healer. The fire or monster itself penalizes the DPSer the healer penalizes themselves when they blow their mana healing people standing in the fire.

[Turaz]

I like that they totally ignored the 5 man / trash pulls with geared dps and initial agro bits of the vengance question.

The design intent there would have been interesting to know.

I'm guessing it is something like 'always bring a rouge or hunter' or 'oops'.

Currently it seems to me that tank skill is only really a factor in the fist 5 or 10 seconds and one missed shield slam (or equiv) or getting 'lucky' and dodging a bunch (and thus not stacking veng/getting rage) can defeat even perfect tank play... but getting hit and exp isn't worth it because after about 20 seconds vengance makes threat a non issue even if all you do is spam devastate (or equiv) while you watch tv for the rest of the fight.

Personally I'd rather they balance us to wear threat stats and drop the vengance crap.

You shouldn't always be able to hold aggro for every situation, when you do that the game does not become interesting and you might as well have a robot play the game if you worry about 5 man trash that way.

[Therec]

3 words
Disa
Poin
Ting

Really, warriors have a reliable self heal now? This FAQ answered nothing. We already knew, from previous blue posts, their position on vengeance, so this faq added nothing.
Why they would answer things that were written on patch notes? Taunts can miss? Interrupts can miss? Seriously, what a waste of space.

Also, bear tanks innervating is laughable at best, did that dev read their own patchnotes?

I wonder if, now here me out, the developers are tired of these Q and As, and they're picking the stupidest questions that have the easiest answers so that they don't have to write very much. I mean why answer thought provoking questions that you may have to retract later on, when you can write 2 paragraphs on why every tanking class is not the worst one in the game atm. Better yet just take a four word answer to some of these questions, "READ THE PATCH NOTES" and string it out into a paragraph.

[r80354]

My money's on legendary tank trinket tbh. It's pretty much the only consistent gear slot used by all 4 tanks that wouldn't need 3 or more different forms of the item and/or couldn't be used by DPS to great effect.

Need a legendary tanking necklace, think Flava Flav...

[Wyattbw09]

"Q: Is there any plan to add a new tank class in the future?"
"A:We don’t see WoW as a game that can support unlimited different class types (and the different talent specs almost behave as full classes these days!"

Don't expect anymore classes in future expansions.

There is simply no need for a tank,healer,DPS class. I would support creating a specific class that was dedicated to CC and whose primary role was CC but adding more of the classes we already have is silly and pointless.

Quite frankly, as a warrior tank the last thing I want is more plate wearing DPSer running around rolling need on tanking gear I can use because they might maybe someday what to try tanking something.

[Mercadi]

bear druid’s ability to cast Innervate

I couldn't help. but lol. Very Hard. Thanks Blizz.

[Ninurta]

An another disappointing ask the devs they speak like politicians, Answer the easy questions with no real answer at all.

Its not that there were no good questions asked its the ones they pick to answer.

[kukuluku]

"Overall, we don’t want tanks to have 100% guaranteed threat on a pull, so we don’t want to buff that aspect of Vengeance"
i think a pally and dk tank can do much more burst threat than a warrior one ( don't know for druid since i haven't raided with 1 since cataclysm ) and i think that's unfair since that makes raid leaders want to have palladins start as tank so the dps can pewpew from the start.