Tanking and Survivability Changes
Written by Wildchild.
We are making some adjustments to tank survivability based on what we’re seeing in Icecrown Citadel. We feel this is particularly important in preparation for upcoming Heroic attempts. This is tricky and occasionally subjective, so we might very well make more adjustments as we get even more data.
Paladin:
# Sacred Duty now provides 2 / 4% Stamina, down from 4 / 8% Stamina. The cooldown advantages of the talent remain unchanged.
Death Knight:
# Frost Presence now provides 8% Stamina, up from 6% Stamina.
# Icebound Fortitude now provides 30% base damage reduction, up from 20% damage reduction. For a geared tank with high defense, this translates to 50% damage reduction, up from 40%.
It’s important to note that we aren’t trying to single out paladins here. We like the tank balance of warriors and druids at the moment, and we have a larger sample size of warrior tanks that we can compare. Another solution would have been to buff warriors, death knights and druids and then increase boss damage accordingly. Obviously, that would have been a much larger change with greater risks and a longer delay.
Though Ardent Defender is always a possible target for changes, we like that this talent provides such a distinction between warriors and paladins. Rather than have all the tanks have the same health, armor, avoidance and cooldowns, we’d rather have four unique tanking classes rather than just superficial or artistic differences. Yes, that design is harder to balance, but we think class distinction is ultimately more interesting, which is better for the long term health of the game. The goal remains to have all four tanks be viable for any encounter, assuming sufficient gear and skill, and any differences in performance on individual encounters to be minor. “Minor” is obviously a subjective term.
Please note that the death knight change will result in a small survivability increase in PvP, which we think is appropriate. We chose it partially with that in mind.
(Source)
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Hot debate. What do you think?
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I was successfully tanking ICC10 and 25 with no issue on my DK blood tank all the way through all content released. I welcome the buff but didn’t feel a need for one. Heroic may of been trouble as they mentioned so I’m guessing the buff leans towards this.
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Hot debate. What do you think?
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Let’s see…Pallies are great tanks, Warriors and DK’s are decent tanks. Pallies, Warriors and DK’s are great DPS classes, and Pallies are (in most cases) great healers (Freaking PLATE healers on top of that), where Warriors and DK’s have nothing. I’m not saying Pallies overall are overpowered, but there must be a lot of Blizzard developers and employees playing Paladins. /roll eyes
It really makes you step back and wonder…just WHO is supposed to be the “Hero” class in World of Warcraft? I thought at one time the label was with the DK’s…
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Well I dont really have that many problems with D&D to be honest Callamity. I actually avoid using it unless i have more than 3 mobs to control. Like you said using D&D comes at a massive cost, so is it really worth it? I have howling blast glyphed, so if i use howling blast at the start of my rotation all targets have FF. I then apply plague strike and pestilence, and add a couple of blood boils to good measure, and invariably I have my mobs under control. D&D certainly has its place in DK tanking but I honestly feel its overrated a bit.
All in all i agree fully with Callamity when he hints that palas are OP. More than once i shared the same feeling that a lot of people in blizz’s dev team must be playing palas. As tanks they do shit loads of dps! Bloody hell they are tanks, but with all the AoE they pull they sometimes pull 2.5-3k or more! No other tank even comes close to this level of dps. As dps they do a lot of dps especially against multiple trash mobs, and have decent single target dps (it depends of ccourse on which retri spec they are using and their rotation).
The fact is that a lot of people whined about how OP DKs were, and blizz nerfed them too much in my opinion. We are nowhere near OP now and people’s general perception is that they still are and this is not true. I for one welcome the change to DK tanking, as it brings balance to tanking in general.
Cheers,
Razzle
P.S.- I tank with a DK and a warrior and i find it a lot easier to tank with my DK. But that’s just my opinion.
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In general, I think Blizzard’s approach of homogenising the tanks is a mistake too. I think each tank class should have something about it which makes them better at certain types of fights… perhaps it isn’t wise to make those differences too significant, but they should be there. These differences really add to the flavour of the game, IMO.
Thus, I think Blizzard should stick to the original idea. Warrior = raid boss tank. Paladin = multiple mobs tank. DK = high magic fight. The only tank class that really never did fit a specialised role is the druid, and as a result you see almost no druids tanking in high level raids, which IMO is a shame. (Also, it could have something to do with the poor itemisation for druid tanks.)
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You are correct druid tanks are not specialized.
AoE threat, it’s hard to beat a druid tank swipe/maul combinations.
Single target threat, lacerate mangle maul also hard to beat.
The only reason you don’t see bear tanks in high level raids is the common misperception that they are in some way inferior. The simple fact is that there is nothing that a bear cannot tank successfully both trash and boss.
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Aye, we have two bear tanks in the guild and they perform as well or in some cases better than our prot palas and warriors and our DK tanks. I dissagree however, that DK tanks should be relegated solely to high magic fights, although i see why they are useful in those kind of encounters. Jaraxus and Lady Deathwhisper are good examples of fights where it is useful to have a DK tank popping interrupts and having high magic resistence. DK tanks can have a reasonable hp pool coupled with also reasonably high avoidance and damage mitigation. I have no problem doing some AoE tanking on frost either, or single target tanking. I think any tank class is viable for any encounter as long as you know what you are doing.
As for palas having a slighyly lower health pool than other tank classes. Palas have lay on hands and can flash heal themselves. While DKs can do a moderate amount of selfhealing, it doesnt come close to what may be achieved by palas.
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My main is a Tankadin. I’m not at all troubled by the nerf and I totally support the buff to Death Knights. My guilds’ best tank leveled a pally because he was tired of seeing all the dammage his DK took in Ulduar, and he hasn’t looked back. Now he is back to tanking on his warrior which he also loves.
What really bugs me is the pervasive misconceptions about one tanking class versus another. Pallies are OP?? A moron paladin stacking ONLY stam is as hard to heal as a DK at the same level of gear. Its nice doing 10mans with 2-3 paladins in the group, but I think it would be better for raiding to have more than 1 class that is “desirable” for both MT and OT.
I also think specializing tank classes is a bad idea… you never know who might be available or who is really the better player, reguardless of gear quality. A good player can do far better with a garbage toon than a garbage player can do with a good toon.
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I’m gonna have to disagree with you Razzle. A DK’s Ability to self heal is equal to or in some cases better than that of a paladin’s. Flash heal on a prot paladin is well crap, the amount it heals is generally less than what my DK gets out of Death strike and my paladin is much better geared. Also while casting we lose almost all of our defensive capabilities, no blocking parrying etc. So if we’re in the need of that quick flash heal its too dangerous to try and get it off. Lay on hands is admittedly cool, however it does prevent us from using some of our other survival CDs if we use it on ourselves.
Death strike other than being slightly rune expensive has no downside you can use it whenever and it doesn’t effect any other abilities. Truth be told I’ve never used rune tap so I don’t know how effective that is.
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i have a DK tank that is very well geared, however all this gear is meaningless in icc raid as the insta-debuff is a killer for avoidances the health pool buff although very much welcome does not affect the damage taken by DK tanks, on another note i think a DK only tank off hand item should be created to compete with the pala/warrior shield off hand, a friend of mine with a paladin tank has exactly the same gear as me except for his weapon and shield and due to this shield he takes on average 1.2-1.8k less damage per boss strkie than i do and this is in most cases a lifesaver and potential raid save. dunno what other DK tanks think to this idea, or maybe have it that DK’s can use shields and who knows have a similar playing firld among the three plate wearing tank classes.
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In my humble opinion you can hardly say “paladins were the most balanced class” due to balance always reffering to relativity towards something else. That being said I will be crying over the stamina loss, was nearly gonna hit 50k on my paladin and now ill need to wait a while for that again I guess!
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Basically, I don’t care one wit about the paladin nerf… it’s a minor inconvenience that will be forgotten about. I do have something to say about all this commentary on paladin aoe threat.
When you are learning a new pull for the first time, and you specifically request crowd control to keep the healer from getting pwnd before you are in control of the fight do you get it? I didn’t, and then I got blamed for pulling wrong. Paladin AoE is a handy replacement for some CC/planning ahead, but it still dont mean anything if your dps are a bunch of morons that dont know what they can or should be doing. I love AoE tanking as much as any paladin, but when I ask for cc it would be nice if people would co-operate some.
Now, can we get back on the subject? DK’s needed help badly, and thats not just my opinion, but the opinion of every healer in my guild, and I’m glad they got it.
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