Tanking and Survivability Changes
Written by Wildchild.

Quote from: Crygil

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)

34 Comments so far

  1. Isdentilanis
    February 5th, 2010

    | 3:42 am

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  2. spityogame
    February 5th, 2010

    | 4:07 am
    cool stuff, i was just QQ’ing about my DK tank being far inferior to my paladin tank.

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  3. Damnslin
    February 5th, 2010

    | 6:06 am

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  4. Moosheep
    February 5th, 2010

    | 6:12 am
    Good to see they finally opened their eyes. Nice health buff, And IBF looksl ike it’ll be more promising now. with 585 defense, It’ll be great :)

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  5. SugaryDeath
    February 5th, 2010

    | 7:10 am

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  6. soadnation
    February 5th, 2010

    | 7:19 am

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  7. soadnation
    February 5th, 2010

    | 7:20 am

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  8. Captpwnzor
    February 5th, 2010

    | 9:08 am
    There was no need to take stamina away from paladin tanks to begin with our Class was prolly the best balanced class in the game. Though i will admit Dk’s needed the change they were simply horrible. This “Survivability” change is simply an annoyance to paladin tanks across all realms. It was simply not needed and the Person or Team responsible for it should be shot in the foot.

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  9. Caytonah
    February 5th, 2010

    | 10:42 am
    As a dk tank, i like these changes because our hp sucked balls and no1 can deny that.

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  10. Mareth
    February 5th, 2010

    | 11:46 am
    gogo DK buffs! i never minded the 6% hp buff from Frost Presence, but now i feel confident enough to start tanking ICC25! i had the gear, just my hp always seemed low in my eyes. Glad to finally see some buffs coming our way!

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  11. Cruelous
    February 5th, 2010

    | 12:46 pm
    Captpwnzor said it, stamina reduction is completely unnecessary, they’re well balanced now, and indeed death knights deserve the buff they got.

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  12. Darcangl
    February 5th, 2010

    | 6:32 pm

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  13. Darcangl
    February 5th, 2010

    | 6:33 pm

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  14. Halken
    February 6th, 2010

    | 5:48 am
    It was getting to the point that only pallies were chosen to tank on my realm. I’m glad they got the nerfstick to even the playing field at bit.

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  15. Tom
    February 6th, 2010

    | 6:26 pm
    An equally geared warrior can take a beating just as well as a pally. DKs seemed to be hurting from the debuff in ICC, and it seems fair that they would get a buff. Usually the only complaints that I see from other tanks are about the ridiculous amount of aoe threat I can hold as prot pally. I would hate to see my threat nerfed, but if anything needed nerfing I would say that it was the threat.

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  16. Darch
    February 7th, 2010

    | 7:37 am
    Paladins don’t need a threat reduction, we just got one. Threat at 80 becomes a gear and skill battle for end game content. I personally use both for ICC and never had an issue. The play style for each is what I love, pallys need to stack def, str and stam for block and DKs. Need stam and avoidance. These mechanics are what make them different. No need to worry, both will have little issue Surviving.

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  17. Joke
    February 7th, 2010

    | 3:11 pm
    /Highfive Darch… our Righteous Fury did just take a 10% threat reduction, so saying we need an even bigger nerf would be taking away one of the best dynamics of pally tanking (aoe threat) in my opinion. I have no issue with DK’s getting buffed, cuz they actually need it, but let’s get off the pally nerf bandwagon shall we?

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  18. Dkeater
    February 7th, 2010

    | 9:10 pm
    Finally Dks get un nerfed im a DK tank and it was hard to keep up my stam. I dont think they should of nerfed the pallys though

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  19. brad
    February 8th, 2010

    | 8:15 am

    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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  20. Dragon
    February 8th, 2010

    | 10:47 am
    I agree that DK tanks should get the buff since Blizz nerfed them back in 3.1 been up hill battle to get them back to tanking at equal level as other tank classes. Now as for the pally nerf I ask why lower there health for. As one that runs both a dk tank and pally tank knowing the mechanics of them, I have seen alot of pally tanks stack nothing but stam in gem sockets which if you go run with them on dps they can’t hold agg because they usually have no hit, attack power or expertiese to hold agg so that talent blizz felt should be nerfed to lower their health but the pallys that run the right mechanics and don’t just socket stam gems only well we get hit harder with our health pool way I look at it.

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  21. DkTankyyy
    February 8th, 2010

    | 1:30 pm
    I agree. Dk tanks needed the Stamina buff bad, although i do not agree wit the pallyyy nerf.

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  22. Keedron
    February 8th, 2010

    | 6:07 pm
    Im probably just repeating what everyone else already said but pally’s didn’t need the nerf but i agree with the DK buff.

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  23. jericho
    February 8th, 2010

    | 11:25 pm

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  24. Callamity
    February 9th, 2010

    | 8:08 am
    As a DK tank, I appreciate any and all buffs and un-nerfs, but I’d rather get a 2-4% boost in avoidance to 2% gain in HP in Frost stance. If you have 35,000 HP as a DK tank, that’s only a gain of 700 HP. It’s nice, but if you are close to death, 700 HP won’t save the day but 1 in 10 times. Every healer that complains of healing a DK complains about the amount of damage the DK takes compared to other tanks more often than the DK’s lower HP.

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  25. Wrathchylde
    February 9th, 2010

    | 8:53 am
    As a player with a healer and two tank classes, i have to say i wish i had rolled pally instead of warrior 5 years ago the only thing close to consecration for holding aggro is D&D on the Dk’s I wish I had something like this on my warrior , thunderclap has a too long cd,challenging shout even longer,when the group grows in between cd’s i have less ability to protect my healer,i think keeping the electric charge for a certain amount of time as a buff or something similar to an aura,so i can at least grab them by putting myself in their path

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  26. Callamity
    February 10th, 2010

    | 2:11 pm
    Wrathchylde, I’m with you. I wish I’d left the DK alone as a tank and just used him for DPS and leveled my Pally as a tank. Death and Decay is pretty nice, but it has a long cool down, and you need 1 Frost, 1 Blood and 1 Unholy rune to activate it (half of our casting pool), which means you have to stop using those 3 types of attacks several seconds before D&D is available, or you’ll need to wait for 1 of each rune to be available. I wish I could spam cast death and decay every 8 seconds. I can use Blood Boil as an AOE taunt, but it usually takes more than one to pull an add off of the healer.

    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…

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  27. Razzle
    February 16th, 2010

    | 2:11 am

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  28. Elanthos
    February 16th, 2010

    | 8:53 pm
    This is all a bit perplexing. Whilst pallies have quite a few damage reduction talents, their health pool doesn’t seem to be particularly large compared to other tank classes. The only area they seem to be genuinely op in is threat generation, particularly aoe threat-generation. And any tank that regularly takes on the role of handling lots of adds (as opposed to a single boss) really does need a large health pool. Whereas what tanks who regularly take on a single boss need are interrupts and debuffs they can apply to that boss to reduce the boss’s dps.

    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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  29. February 17th, 2010

    | 8:12 pm

    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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  30. Razzle
    February 18th, 2010

    | 11:59 pm

    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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  31. Falconys
    February 21st, 2010

    | 6:58 pm

    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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  32. pygmy
    February 24th, 2010

    | 6:30 am

    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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  33. doombringer
    February 24th, 2010

    | 6:50 pm

    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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  34. Beerend
    March 1st, 2010

    | 9:22 am

    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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