Like it usually happens when Blizzard announce new stuff, players tend to raise their concerns over announced changes. This discussion was inspired by the recent developer chat on twitter, and original post can be found on the Tanking forums (US).
Just for clarification, since some people were confused before: I will be marking quotes GC decided to reply Q, and his answers with A.
Updates:
1. 04.23
2. 04.24
This is the starting post by Migol of Shadowsong (US), that started the whole discussion:
(quote from the recent dev chat on twitter)
“We will make sure they don’t feel gimp compared to the other 3 tanks. We’re not going to give them an ability that they can just spam endlessly to maintain AE threat.
We think Thunder Clap and Shockwave already work well for that. We want you to have to manage threat, but we don’t want it to be insanely hard to manage. (You also might be doing less AE tanking in Cataclysm overall.)“
So for starters, let’s look at “You also might be doing less AE tanking in Cataclysm overall“. As has already been asked, but not yet responded to to my knowledge…if there’s going to be less AE tanking, why are all three other tanks getting better AoE abilities/control?
1) Prot Paladins get an AoE blind+damage, instant cast, which neatly offsets their “weakness” of mobs running over consecrate.
2) Bears get Bloodbath, which gives them something to use with swipe+maul.
3) DKs get a cost-free outbreak, which despite rune nerfs allows for an instant pestilence at the very least, probably going right along with D&D/Bloodboil.If AoE is less of a concern, why are the other tanks getting new abilities to handle AoE? This goes against what Ghostcrawler said just a few months ago about not making new aoe abilities for tanks. It’d be understandable if their existing abilities were tweaked (for example, new non-next strike Maul hitting many more targets), but creating new ones from scratch seems to be contrary to what they’ve been saying.
Direct GC quote:
“We’d like to see less AE overall, so buffing everyone’s AE tools isn’t going to be tops on our agenda. That does however mean that we really can’t afford to have a “best AE tank”, and while things are more fair there than they were in BC, they aren’t fair enough.“
So with all that contradictory statement vs. action occurring, here’s blizzard saying on their twitter commercial: “We’re not going to give them an ability that they can just spam endlessly to maintain AE threat. We think Thunder Clap and Shockwave already work well for that. We want you to have to manage threat, but we don’t want it to be insanely hard to manage.”
For the record, I don’t ever remember seeing a warrior asking for an ability they could just spam for threat. What we’ve needed throughout Wrath is some means of aoe hitting new targets that spawn during add fights like thorim, Valithiria, Arthas, Gunship and so on. In these fights, we can pick up the first set of adds, but then new ones spawn in between the 6 seconds of “we can’t aoe due to cooldown”. 6 seconds is a very long time in these fights.
What we’ve been forced to do is use our two pickup abilities, and then spam single target abilites rapid fire, trying to tab or target new adds before they get to healers/dps. This is hugely inferior to the mechanics of the other tanks. Moreover, we have to work much harder to hold groups through AoE like Blizzard, Seed of Corruption, and so forth; other tanks have aoe hits that will hold aggro though these; we get our two on their cooldowns, and then have to tab through everything, hitting with single-target abilities and cleave.
The big one that hasn’t been addressed yet is Cleave. Since Cleave is no longer going to be off the global cooldown, we’re stuck when it comes to AoE; we can Thunderclap, backup+shockwave as before; but then we’re left with the choice of using cleave for two targets or using our higher-threat single abilities for one target. This is a big deal.
What I’m hoping for is an increase of the number of cleave targets since it’s getting “nerfed”. Or if a slot is freed from our glyph+cooldown setup, having the glyph affect more.
Some of you seem to be confusing intensity with diversity. It’s easy to imagine a world where a class has one AE tool that works phenomenally well and a different class that has several AE tools, none of which actually allow them to tank worth a hoot. There seems to be some kind of logic train (wreck?) here that because some classes got abilities that might be useful when AE tanking that we are wrong / changed our minds / lying about how often you will be AE tanking in Cataclysm.
Our goals are that you won’t be spending as much of your tanking time AE tanking in Cataclysm as you did in Lich King. A second goal is that when you are AE tanking, you should use different abilities than when you are single-target tanking. A third goal is that when you are AE tanking, you should use more than one (or maybe two) abilities. None of those seem contradictory.
If you want to challenge our goals as being unrealistic or dumb, then feel free. But we’re seeing a lot of this inductive (specific to general) logic where a player tries to poke a hole in one ability and use that to mean our goals can’t possibly be met.
Try one of these arguments instead:
1) I disagree with Blizzard putting more emphasis on crowd control and single-target damage.
2) I agree or am ambivalent about that goal, but I don’t see how we’ll get there because of X reason.
3) I agree or am ambivalent about that goal, but I don’t see how Y ability will help realize that goal.
Q: I choose #2. I already said why, but to reiterate:
X reason=We don’t have tools beyond thunderclap, shockwave and cleave. And cleave is no longer off the global, which is a nerf to our aoe capability. How is this being addressed?
A: We could increase the damage of Thunder Clap and Shockwave if we needed to. I’m not convinced we’ll need to, particularly in a world with the Vengeance concept. Warrior AE threat was generally fine in Naxxramas. It only started to slip in later tiers, and in comparison to (some) other tanks.
Q: Also #3, how does Heroic Leap help realize that goal? It seems far too limited and situational to be of much use beyond an occasional pulling tactic when the stars align and mobs are close together & stunnable.
A: Not every new spell is there to help realize those goals. If we wanted to give warriors a new AE ability, we’d give them something either spammable or persistent. We’re just not sure they need a new tool in that space. Any balance issue can be solved with number tweaking of existing tools.
Q: i am ambivalent about that goal, but i dont see every fight in cataclysm never featuring staggered adds that will need to be tanked. i dont see how giving warriors nothing to fill in this hole in their design will improve their gameplay in those situations.
A: There will almost certainly be staggered adds sometimes. It won’t be every encounter. In those situations you’ll need to use your full tool box to handle them. Maybe you need to save Thunder Clap for a few seconds. Maybe the rogue and hunter help pull the adds to you. Maybe you Devastate and tab. Maybe you blow Challenging Shout. Maybe you blow Intimidating Shout until Thunder Clap has finished its cooldown. If we wanted you to always have an answer for every single add situation, then Thunder Clap would have no cooldown. That would make tanking easier for sure. Is making tanking easier really more fun? At what point is it so easy that you’re just standing there getting beat on?
Q: The problem is that your preview simply didn’t provide enough information to instill confidence that warriors aren’t going to be dealing with the same issues aoe tanking that we have now.
A: I don’t think warriors have any AE issues now, except for two: some classes have to do less work to AE tank, and the threat generation doesn’t scale with gear as well as it needs to. Again, we don’t want to make tanking just hitting one button or a macro. It’s not a matter of giving you an ability for any conceivable situation you might find yourself in. It’s only a problem if you’re horribly broken in those situations and I don’t really think warriors are there. As I’ve said before, we like how warriors AE tank. It generally works. It didn’t work when Tclap had a 4 target limit.
Do you really struggle for example in 5-player heroics? Did you struggle in Naxx? Did you wipe a lot on Ony whelps when a warrior tanked them?
Q: However, all of your comments suggest that the reason we won’t be AE tanking is because we won’t be able to take the damage, rather than not having the opportunity to AE tank. I distinctly remember the exact same logic used before WoTLK came out: “Players should be able to hold agro on the mobs, we want the real threat to be the mobs killing the tank”
A: Maybe I’m misremembering something, but the goal going into LK was that warriors should be able to AE tank rather than every group using paladins for trash, and that casters should be able to use their AE spells, otherwise what are they there for? We succeeded in both of those, but a little too well on the latter to the extent that anything with more than 1 mob became a job for Blizzard / Hurricane / Mind Sear, etc.
In Cataclysm, there will be more threat to the tank of dying if you try to just AE tank every pull. Likewise, AE damage won’t be quite as awesome so that single targeting things will probably be a better strategy when there are say 3-5 adds. If it’s a dozen twilight whelps, then sure, AE away
Q: This is an odd comment. The answer is No, but not because the warrior was sufficient. It’s because the mobs happened to do so little damage that the DPS were able to tank them (or you had another tank with you).
A: But the goal is not “tank maintains aggro no matter what.” The goal is the tank can control the situation enough for you to complete the content.
Your other arguments were that other tanks can AE better than warriors, which I agreed was a problem. That doesn’t mean warriors need a new ability to fill the gaps though.
Q: I’m sorry Ghostcrawler, but the parts I underlined are ridiculous; many warriors reading it will shudder instinctively. You cannot save thunderclap on staggered adds or the initial wave is going to run rampant; we have to use it to get them on us so we can use shockwave (we almost never can use just shockwave because of it’s wonky direction/range). On pretty much any aoe encounter in a raid, challenging shout=I just grabbed the boss in addition to the adds I wanted, or I just grabbed the other tank’s adds too and now have waaaayyyyy to much stuff on me.
A: Then all you’re saying here is “tanking is too hard,” aren’t you? Imagine the warrior was the only tank in the game. Would you be making these same claims? In an absolute sense, is AE tanking too hard? Or is it only relative to say paladins and druids (which again, might be a problem, but the solution isn’t to make warrior AE tanking trivial)?
Q: Asking for another AoE tool is just like asking TC to not have a cooldown from GC’s PoV
A: Bingo. I’m trying to separate a few different arguments here:
1) The paladin can tank better than I can.
2) I need another tool to tank.
3) AE tanking is too challenging.
All three are kind of getting munged up in this thread.
Q: 1) The Paladin and Bears (and possibly DKs) can all AoE tank better than I can.
2) I don’t need another tool to tank; assuming other tank’s AoE threat is being significantly nerfed (though the class previews seem to indicate the opposite is true).
3) AE tanking is not too challenging.
A: This was definitely my assumption. Some posters here seem to be arguing that AE tanking is too challenging and just needs to be made easier.
Q: Don’t you see GC that the above list IS the reason why this thread is playing out the way it is. As long as #1 is true, as far as aoe tanking goes, then some warrior tanks will agree with #2 and #3. If a paladin has to expend as much effort to aoe tank as a warrior then #2 is removed from the equation and number #3 becomes a separate debate (one that the designers of the game are at the discretion of setting the bar for).
A: I understand that is why it’s playing out, but from the perspective of a designer trying to fix problems with the game, it doesn’t help to have issues that are so conflated. If nerfing paladin AE tanking threat or buffing warrior AE tanking threat fixes the problem, then great. It AE tanking is too challenging for warriors even in that world, then we need to consider other options.
Q: Intimidating Shout – I don’t use this in PVE and maybe I’m wrong, but there’s NO positive aspect to using this as a tank trying to generate aggro. It doesn’t generate threat and it makes the adds that you WANT in melee range run away out of melee range. Assuming they’re not fear immune, which most already are.
A: I didn’t mean to imply that blowing Intimidating Shout is a swell idea on every AE pull. The context was a scenario that apparently comes up all the time where the warrior has recently used Thunder Clap and Shockwave and a whole lot of Morogrim-style adds pour into the room, leaving the hapless warrior without an AE button to push and solve the whole problem. I was pointing out that there are a lot of things you can do in that situation. Yes, if someone is about to die and you can’t wait for Thunder Clap to come back up, then by all means use Intimidating Shout. That’s what it’s there for.
We’re just not crazy about the sound of any of these ideas that have the warrior able to use Thunder Clap and have it tick away on the mobs or on the ground to make sure things will stick to you no matter what.
Warriors tanked for years without Shockwave and with a pretty wimpy Thunder Clap that only hit four adds. Yet, they still managed to handle a variety of fights, including this staggered adds situation that is the current hot topic button for this forum. I played a warrior tank a lot in that time period, and yeah, sometimes you lost aggro and sometimes you wiped. It’s a lot easier today. I’m not trying to use one of these “back in my day, we tanked uphill in the snow” arguments, but I am trying to get a sense for how easy you really want tanking to be and still have fun doing it.
(Again, I’m totally bought into the argument that AE tanking on live may not be as easy for warriors as paladins and druids. I’m trying to establish how AE tanking should feel in an absolute, not a relative sense.)
Q: It was emphatically not fine in naxxramas, unless you mean to say “warrior aoe was what we would ahve considedred fine, but paladins and death knights were so OP as to be on another planet entierly and made warriors completely pathetic-looking by comparison.”
Is that what you meant to say, GC?
A: No, I meant warrior tanks could tank all of those large pulls just fine in Naxxramas. Since nobody was really pulling off of the warriors, it wasn’t a really noticeable deal if someone else could do it with fewer buttons.
I’m just reading a lot of “tanking is so hard” threads, and A) we don’t really agree, and B) if it’s any less challenging I fear a lot of tanks may get bored and move on to other classes. There are some annoying parts of tanking we need to fix, and we definitely want to fix the threat scaling problem and any major disparities in AE tanking. But if you’re looking for an experience even easier than tanking Naxx, I’m not quite sure how to provide that given my A and B above.
Updated on 04.23:
Q: Ghostcrawler, if you want us to use that set of “a lot of things you can do”, you have to make the abilities work for us. Intimidating shout for example is worthless in 5 mans and raiding. Using it in a 5-man is a tremendous risk of pulling many more adds, even when it works on the mobs in question.
A: I feel like you’re setting up a situation in which the only acceptable answer is “No cooldown on Thunder Clap.” If you just dismiss all your other tools as unreliable or not perfectly suited for the situation, then yeah, you’re going to end up in a place where you are waiting 6 long sec for Thunder Clap to come off cooldown.
I used Intimidating Shout a lot tanking heroic Shattered Halls on my warrior. If you took it off your bar, I’m not sure how you got through that dungeon
Q: You keep saying how “easy” tanking is. Can you please explain to me then why Mage has one of the easiest and highest DPS rotations in the entire game? 2-4 buttons? You’re out here moaning how “easy” tanking is, while mages can sit with a juice box in one hand and mouse macro’d abilities on their left and right mouse buttons topping the DPS charts.
A: Your post makes it sound like I’ve ignored this question, but it’s something that has come up often on the forums. You can probably find a response I made within the last couple of months on mage dps. The short answer is that it’s not the number of damage sources that counts. It’s the number of things that affects those damage sources
Q: This seems to be an argument for “tank niches”. That is, paladins and druids are possibly being considered as the AOE tanks. Warriors and DKs would, presumably, have some other niche(s) to fill in Cataclysm. I think this is a bad idea and I try to explain why below.
A: The quote you are responding to wasn’t an argument for tanking niches. I keep trying to ask the question “Is tanking on your warrior too hard if you ignore all the other tank classes?” The answer I keep getting is “We can’t tank as well as the other tank classes.”
Q: CC existed for two reasons back then, and I think everyone’s forgetting the latter. One, trash could actually kill your tank.. quite easily. Two, the tanks couldn’t really hold an infinite amount of garbage like they can now. We’ve all been spoiled by Wrath (and a lesser extent TBC; 4 target TC/swipe wasn’t amazing but Paladins were) and getting back to the Vanilla state where trash is dangerous, requires cc and you can’t just trust one guy to grab and hold all of it without assisting and focusing… well, that’s going to be a very painful transition for some, I think. Mostly idiot dps.
A: That’s why I keep trying to emphasize it so there will be fewer surprises when it happens. Honestly though, I suspect you’re unlikely to see anything like the trash before the second boss of heroic Shadow Labyrinth again. I don’t want to speak for the encounter designers, but the kind of model we talk about a lot is something like heroic Pit of Saron when you’re in appropriate gear. Many of us overgear it these days, but if you don’t you’ll find some of those pulls particularly near the end can be scary. Maybe it’ll be slightly tougher than that, but the point is we don’t want to go back to two dozen pulls in between bosses. We’ll also be sure to keep some “burn the lot of ‘em down” moments, because variety in encounters is good for pacing.
Q: One question I have in mind is whether the same trend will persist in Cataclysm. Will gear scale to a point where a large pack of trash in heroic dungeons can be easily handled by a well geared tank. When that happens, we’re back to the state of play where AoE tanking and AoE dps becomes the norm.
A: We have no problem with you blasting through a dungeon when you outgear it. Part of the fun of getting so powerful is seeing what you can do when you get to go back and pick on those old bullies
Q: When the game goes back to less AE and more CC in cata the skill level will go back up — and at first it’s going to be a blood bath when people who have forgotten how to play will be forced to relearn
A: They might even need some kind of training mode before they’re ready for heroics. Fortunately we have a new feature in Cataclysm called normal modes. 
Q: GC!!!!! All we want is a aoe move that stays on the ground just like Pally and DKs have. Dont have to be a new move just let TC stay on the ground for a few secs and were set.
A: And our concern of doing that is it makes tanking too easy, which risks it becoming boring. We have the same concern about the other classes too.
04.24
I‘ll abstain from using actual quotes here, but these things were basically said above.
Using Demo Shout to tank:
– We don’t like the feel of this. It hits for no damage and puts a debuff on the target that isn’t visible and doesn’t change the target’s behavior at all.
Getting a new tanking AE to use when SW and TC are on cooldown:
– What’s the point though? Why not just remove TC’s cooldown rather than add yet another ability you’re supposed to spam in rotation?
On warriors losing Cleave:
– You’re not losing Cleave. You don’t have infinite use of it, but you’re not going to have infinite use of any of your abilities, because things will cost rage and if you spend rage unwisely you’re going to starve yourself. Use Heroic Strike vs. single targets and Cleave against groups. Besides, I hardly see how Cleave is this panacea for the staggered adds scenario seeing as how it hits a grand total of one additional target (two if glyphed).
On tab targeting:
– We really don’t want to see a scenario (for any tank) where you just stop using your single-target abilities completely. It’s fine to supplement those with an AE attack, but not completely ignore them in group situations. (As an aside, the paladin doesn’t really do this now because he uses the same rotation for both singles and groups. The druid doesn’t do this now because Lacerate doesn’t hit hard enough relative to Swipe. Both are easily fixable though.)
Let’s take four scenarios that cover the majority of encounters:
1) If dozens of twilight whelps are streaming in, fine, just AE tank them and have the dps use Blizzard, Hurricane, Whirlwind, etc. I think you all know how to this by now.
2) If you’re doing a four pull and the mobs hit really hard, then CC one or two and dps the others down single target. You’ll want to keep threat on all the loose mobs, but not by spamming an AE ability unless you can buy yourself plenty of room. I know everyone is scared of CC, but we actually made a pretty good spread of CC abilities in LK, and then sadly nobody ever got to use them. In Cataclysm we are making sure to spread abilities around even more.
3) Now, if you’re doing a four pull and you think you can get away without CC, then ideally you’d use your AE attacks but still pick a target to focus on. That’s the one that gets your Shield Slams and Heroic Strikes and that’s the one dps should focus on first. Keep in mind in today’s world the warriors are Whirlwinding and the Rets are Divine Storming even the single targets, which generates threat on the off targets, which means you might lose those targets if you aren’t tabbing among a bunch of them. In Cataclysm, everyone should be able to focus on one mob at a time again.
4) On the single target fight, like many bosses, you’d just use Thunder Clap for the debuff and otherwise keep up your single target rotation.
Q: Is funny how you keep quoting people and answering to absolutely nothing GC.
Your points seems to be, you can do it so is fine, we know the rest can do it better and easier but that doesnt concern us because you can do it to, just worse and doing more work for it.
Why is it fine? why everyone else can do it better and easier, you are concerned about us being bored while tanking, yet we get worse than bored, frustrated when a pally comes over and pulls every single mob away and we are left with the one we taunt just so we got rage to keep TC up on the rest…
A: I keep asking the same question and getting very few of you to answer it. In fact many of the answers even say something to the extent of “I don’t like your question. I just want to tell you that I think paladins are more powerful than warriors.”
My question (is warrior tanking too difficult or is paladin tanking too easy?) has a lot of relevance because it determines whether we buff warriors to the paladin level or nerf paladins to the warrior level. Complaining about paladins on page 26 of this thread doesn’t accomplish much when I said many pages earlier that we think there is an imbalance here that we intend to fix. Now we are trying to decide in which direction to fix it. I like the warrior tanking style myself, and I am concerned about making it less fun for warriors who also like it.
On the other hand, we want to make sure there are enough tanks in Cataclysm, so making tanking extremely challenging and prone to failure risks thinning those ranks.
On the third hand, making tanking boring also risks thinning those ranks.
Q: I’m pretty sure he meant challenging shout instead of intimidating shout.
A: No, I meant Intimidating Shout. Back before warriors had the AE tools that they had in LK, you used (or you should have at least) Intimidating Shout if things went wrong. The example up above was Thunder Clap was on cooldown and streaming adds were coming in and the tank was presumably losing control of the situation. Intimidating Shout could buy you some time to get things under control again. It could also make things worse if you weren’t careful. I’m sad to hear people say they’re too cautious to ever use it. It was a lot of fun.
Tanking is just a lot easier today overall, which is probably a good thing, but you do lose some moments like that where you could play smart, save everyone’s life and feel like a hero. I don’t remember the dungeons where I tanked everything perfectly. I remember the ones where things almost fell apart and I managed to put it all right again. The challenges are more memorable than the milk runs.
Q: Is there any evidence of this? You made tanking far easier for WotLK, and I thought the Tanking population went up. 2 Longtime DPSers in my guild even rerolled tanks for this expansion.
A: It’s hard to pull the evidence out of the data. Even if tanking did drop, it’s very hard to figure out why in the absence of an exit interview or something.
I’m going mostly on the feedback from tanks who say they miss something from back when you really had to give 110% to kill a boss. Now days threat often isn’t an issue and the target is tauntable anyway, and you have a lot of cooldowns and so do the healers. That’s not to say tanks never fail, but it just doesn’t feel as challenging as it used to, and yeah, some long-term tanks miss that. You used to classify tanks as good or bad in good part due to their ability to generate threat.
Q: It is NECESSARY to have situations where bad tanks will fail. If bad tanks don’t fail, then there won’t be good tanks. You shouldn’t have a way to immediately recover if you make a mistake. Maybe that mistake won’t wipe you, but it might kill someone. It SHOULD kill someone. Tanking poorly should have consequences. Tanking well should be apparent to the people you group with. They should say “Wow. This is a good tank.” In Burning Crusade, when I tanked heroic Shattered Halls or Shadow Labs, I often got major compliments from my group members. They were surprised that a warrior tank could make those instances seem as easy as some of the Paladins they had run with.
A: Yeah, I can relate to a lot of that.
The question is how many of those situations we can afford to have before we’re left with a few good tanks and a lot of tankless groups. 
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wording was wrong on something:
“Put healer in a room with a tank in the middle, generating standard heal threat. Start spawning enemys 1 at a time every second from the other side of the room, aggroed from healthreat. See which tanks can stop 100% of them and which cannot. (DK would have a rough time, but probably could. Druid would swap and go to sleep. Pally would set Conc to auto-cast and go for a beer. War would be screwed in about 10 seconds.)”
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I have LV80 tanks of all classes… War, Pal, DK, and Bear. All are raid capable geared, most have been through damn near all of ICC.
That said, my response to this bullshit is simple.
Spawn an unlimited number of mobs that do no damage, put a DK, War, Pal, and Druid standing in the same place. Watch threat meters.
And then fix warriors.
In fact, lets try another thought experiment;
Put healer in a room with a tank in the middle, generating standard heal threat. Have these dummy enemys spawn from the other side of the room, aggroed from healthreat. See which tanks can stop 100% of them and which can’t. (DK would have a rough time, but probably could. Druid would swap and sleep. Pally would set Conc to auto-cast and go for a beer. War would be screwed in about 10 seconds.)
IMO, for what it’s worth, DK’s are the worst tanks. Their runes cripple their instant reaction ability. Next I’d say would be a tie between Druids and War’s (as long as pulls don’t go over 5 mobs, if so then druid moves ahead to 2nd)… and Pally tanking is a (fun) OP joke.
The DK needs off the stupid rune system… it cripples adaptability. Imagine you’re a DK with a 5 mob pull, some idiot mage AoE’s too soon and 3 enemys are pulled… well you can taunt one, pull one… now what? Your runes are all busy dealing with building AoE threat on the 4 you have… and he’s out of your D+D range… so you just sit and watch for 5 seconds. Should this situation just be a ‘lul iceblock’ or is this a flaw? It’s an issue the other tanks don’t deal with… it’s like a pally being OOM, or a war/bear being out of rage, you just get disabled for a while and have to watch.
The Druid needs more versitility. Their rotation is 2 buttons for singles, 2 buttons for multi, and 1 button you hit constantly. I love the spammability of swipe for building threat on groups while running, but we need a bit more to do then hit 2 buttons. I love my druid though, very fun, and I feel effective. And they are fun healers, yay duel spec.
The Warrior needs the capability to manage large pulls better. Tab-spam threat is fun, and feels like tanking should… I love the feel of war tanks… however, on pulls of 10 enemys the GCD alone kills that thought. (Or, we could improve the IQ of the playerbase and bring back the age of Crowd Control. I would also take that as an option and love you forever.)
The Pally needs nothing. Well, I’d take a 30 sec reduction to the cooldown on divine plea… now and then when I’m chain pulling it wears off running from one group to the next and it’s a minor inconvineonce for a few seconds. In raids with other tanks, when we pull a large group and stand together, it takes only moments before my random AoE threat accidentally pulls everything they were ment to be tanking onto me… and fortunatly the defences are OP enough to deal with it.
With the pally though, I do want to note: Every-damn-thing in this X-pac is undead. Pal’s get a lot of undead toys which won’t be around when we’re after elementals and dragons again.
Anyway, that’s my 8cents *rimshot*. Frankly, I don’t care what they do… I enjoy tanking and no matter what they nerf or buff, I’ve got a tank that’s benifiting from it.
Roll the other tank classes guys… when you get 4 of them, you are immune to nerfs.
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Ok, so read and reread the forums, looked over proposed remedies and
The constant reminder that warrior tanking made easy makes it boring
I could understand that as well eventually after giving a disclaimer
In every heroic while getting geared heroics become a cake walk. I have
Been playing this warrior since vanilla cringing at the minor nerfs
Too warriors as well as enormous buffs too pallys, and DKs. I have
Played a druid tank and will never do it again, I won’t play a DK tank
Because even as op as they have always been you need a specific feel for
Warriors take some of the most skill too play as is even being able
Too hold entire zones, but I personally rely on cleave heavily.
Extra hits and extra bleeds, my request is if we are supposed too tab
Target over and over again then reduce some of the rage cost for heroic
Strike, or just don’t nerf our cleave. Warriors need too be first in
And stomping before people start throwing aoe, unlike pallys and DKs
Warriors/druids need rage too even set off our rotation. So imho,
Pallys ARE overpowered and should be brought down a notch, and preferably
DKs as well considering the fact they keep getting buffed so you cab
See a TON of garbage dk tanks and MUCH fewer warriors.
That’s just my 2 cents though. Oh and PLEASE make CC an important
Function again, I came back home after wotlk was released and had
People thinking I was insulting them when I mentioned CC on the
First pulls….That’s the nostolgic part of wow I miss….
Thanks!
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@Swampthing – I do in some parts agree with you, in the fact that WoW have become to easy is true, but I cant agree with you that it will be a bad thing with some new stuff, or even totaly rebuild of some things – WoW have the recent months become very boring, and I am thinking of quiting if it wasnt for the new Raids coming up. Tanking have bacome easy as any other class, and I’m realy looking forward for some difficulty in the future.
Me and my friend was discussing last night that it would be an awesome idea that if in Cataclyst, when there comes a raid like Naxx (same length and niveau) and then there comes a higher level raid like Ulduar, and then you would be able to do the “Naxx like” raid, in Ulduar niveau (like a heroic version). And the same thing to take the “Naxx like” raid on ICC niveau when that is released.
Think about the idea, I’m open for critics – this just seemed like the right place to “discuss the idea (:
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I simply dont understand why people is whining about that Warriors cant maintain AoE threat – I got a Warrior tank, and the only reason I am sometimes losing threat is that I am not concentrated.
If i concentrate i can easely keep up agro on lots of targets at the same time. The only time I remembered agro problems was while i was leveling, but thats again, a problem with skills, and not the abilitys the Warrior got.
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I am a warrior tank and have tanked several raids. Tab targeting does work as well as TC/SW for DPS to AoE down. I do feel there should be some changes to warrior tanks in existing spells. Maybe, make Challenging Shout a 2min cd vs. 3min. Consider a shorter cd on TC or Heroic Throw. It is unfortunate that so many people discredit warriors, we do have a few options for aggro spells. I just would like to see these changes on the next update patch.
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I have a pally and warrior tank. Pally requires far less threat management with groups and single targets IMO as well as having slightly better survivability. Tanking as a warrior cant be done effectively by most and would be too difficult.
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Personally, I see all the above as a type of political double talk.
I’ll start off by saying that I play 3 classes of tank. All but the druid bear form.
But let’s look at some history.
When I began playing wow, right before BC I made a Pali as my first toon. At that tine and after having tried to level it I got extremely frustrated simply because at the time the Pali couldn’t fight its way out of a wet paper bag. It wasn’t until right before Lk that Blizz finally buffed the Pali to the toon it is today. After being frustrated with the Pali, I almost just quite the game, cut my monetary loss of $100.00 and just leave. I rolled a loc after this and continued playing the game, got bored with the loc, made a Shaman (loved it) and then eventually maybe a year later I decided first to roll a warrior. Now understand that at the time I wasn’t interested in nor knew anything about these toons ability to tank. So my Pali was ret and my warrior was first Arms, then later I went fury as fury would do some greater dps compared to arms especially duel welding 2 two handed weapons. Well wouldn’t you know it! Blizz steps in and throws such a nerf onto fury that I actually the next day after logging on and went out to level, had lost 400 dps. This was a substantial loss for any toon. I re-talented into arms and while it never was the dps generator the fury or arms toon it once was before LK I did manage to get it to lvl 80. Mind you my pali was still sitting at the same level I left it at in the beginning.
More history on instances/raids.
Before LK everyone was a piece of the puzzle in such things. A ranged toon often times would be the one to pull a single target and the tank would pick it up before the ranged got hit by it. All dps would then use all their other abilities to try to make it through the instance. Loc might have to banish a mob or mage may need to sheep one before a pull and so on. To say the least it took quite some time to do an instance. It wasn’t anything like it is today.
Now why do you suppose Blizz went or is going to a 180 degree turn from that! No matter what is stated here in all the double talk from whoever it was from Blizz or what is typed in the forums by them. It’s all about trying to generate more money. Well Blizz managed to do that with LK. To the tune of upping the paying players to 11 million. Blizzes team has always targeted End Game content and used to be more to the Arena content from even my beginning. But in order to generate more players, they decided that making the game easier was a viable solution to make more money and to sell the new LK addition. And they changed things dramatically from what W.o.W. was to what it is today. But having done that (even though we still have endgame content albeit incredibly easier than any level 70 end game used to be) they strayed from their original thinking of having a game that couldn’t be beat. Today groups are getting closer and closer to killing the LK and some have done it already and it’s all been done in a 2 year period. Now they are at the panic seat! What do we do now! We send it back in time to where it used to be or at least to almost like it used to be. They paint you a picture of getting to go to level 85 (do you really think you’re going to get to 85 in a week!), tell you that you’re going to get to make a new class and in genera,l show you some pretty things for the new Cata then slam you with but! We are going to mess everything you’ve worked so hard for now, by changing the whole mechanics of things. Everything gets the same stam/ hp as the tanks and well you can go read all the craziness they have planned. But if you are sitting there thinking it’s going to be W.O.W. Life as usual when Cata comes out then you’re surely fooled. It’s going to be harder, you’re going to have to re-gem, re-enchant, re-talent maybe even have to re-gear and yes, learn all over how to play your toon. It won’t any more be like it is today where you as a dps and heals expect the tank to do it all as they do now. Ie: You sit back if you’re dps or heals, wait for the tank to make first contact, gather up what extras there are, hold them all while you sit and spam a couple of keys or mouse buttons and the tank (especially the warrior tanks), try to figure out how not to lose agro (god forbid the tank does now! Cuz if the poor person that is tanking does happen to lose it, they will get all manner of verbal chastising and abuse). No, when Cata comes out, you’re going to have to actually play your toon and be a viable part of the instance group. You won’t be able to sit there with your fingers on a few keys, sandwich in one hand, watching a movie on tv and glancing over to your monitor once in a while to see if the tank has everything so you can push your couple of keys.
Now if I’m anywhere close to being right and depending on how difficult the game is getting ready to become: I figure at first, with all the P.R. hype that Blizz is putting out that they will make a bunch of money from the sell of Cata. Especially to the youngsters. But if they leave it as I’ve read on everything, they will eventually see a decline in monthly pmts. Especially from parents of the young kids that play today! These kids are going to see its too hard and stop playing and eventually, the mom and dad is going to notice them not playing it as much and isn’t going to keep paying for something the kids have lost interest in. And even the teenagers who are having their parents pay will fall into this too. Personally, I have no plans at all of purchasing Cata anywhere in the near future of its release. No way! Not having read everything I have on it now. It’s not going to be the W.o.W it is today. Tanking may or may not be easier in Cata but get ready for the SURPRIZE!
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And also– if you make tclap like pally consecrate, it takes the fun out of the class. I would be happy if they added a talent maybe to prot spec that removes the CD of heroic throw (deep prot) or maybe lowers it to 10 seconds to give warriors a way to add threat on a mob out of melée range after you taunt.
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I play a warrior tank myself and have come to the following conclusion:
warriors are mainly single-target tanks. If you play a warrior correctly, you can do a few things other classes can’t do. Pallys, for instance, need to spam 1,2,3 to stay alive against bosses. A warrior, in comparison, can simply rack up a bunch of threat, an go eat lunch while the dps burn the boss. Of course this only works for the tank + spank encounters.
The main problem with WOTLK is that everyone is obsessed with DPS. If you are a dps reading this, I reccommend that you go into your addons, uninstall recount, and get a threat meter instead. Dps, instead of AoEing down large groups, should be using their threatmeter to switch targets. On my warrior pre LK, when I was dpsing, I would select a target, do as much damage as I could, and when my threat reached a certain threshold, I would hit tab and do the same to a different mob- allowing my threat on the previous mob to slowly drop. This is what people should be doing as a dps, not spamming consecrate/arcane blast/blizzard/ whatever AoE move.
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To follow up on one more item: to have to work harder, means you have less attention to pay to more important things, like boss positioning, health, Intervening to save raid members from adds, and keeping debuffs like Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Shout up.
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My biggest comment about warrior tanking: a lot more effort for the same or lesser effect.
Think about that: to maintain threat, warriors have to keep their rotation tight, be mindful of the threat being dished out to every mob and select the least-threat mob, and then-and-only-then be able to watch their health so they can hit Last Stand or Shield Wall in time.
Response to earlier comments:
1) Warrior AoE tanking is not broken.
2) Staggered adds are not fun, but they aren’t a major problem currently.
3) Threat-generation for AE targeting is less on warriors. It currently generates less threat though – less than equivalently-geared paladins, druids and even some DKs.
My requests of Blizzard would be:
1) Combine some abilities – with the removal of on-next-hit abilities, the rotation will be too packed. Make some of the abilities multi-use – combine Heroic Strike with Devastate perhaps.
2) Buff the damage a bit of Thunder Clap a bit, or reduce the CD to balance threat.
3) You are giving new tools to every other tanking class – please give warriors something interesting, useful and unique. Something raid-wide would be nice. Shockwave was awesome and unique – now, that uniqueness is gone with Paladins receiving Shockwave.
4) Oh yes, and nerfing Sunder Armor to 3 stacks maximum so Fury warriors don’t have to work so hard… I’m not a fan.
I’m very seriously thinking about making a paladin my main tank next expansion. I like warrior tanking, but it’s a dirty job that doesn’t pay as well.
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I agree, warrior tanking is elite, BECAUSE it requires more skill than the other classes.
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I agree and can’t agree with all.I play warrior myself.Yes we have a good AoE tanking and we keep a treat in most of case.I rear miss a mobs if i have a chance to clap and SW before some idiotic dps use all what he have on them.But there is a one big BUT warriors suck badly in any situation where have a gauntlet event.Let’s say Valitria but in 25 version (in 10 i handle it somehow).Now 3 mobs inc from gate in next moment 2 more from back gates, ok clap.Then worms spawn and till i do whatever i have they eat 3-4 dps and 1 healer in the best case.Ok let’s say i gather somehow.Due less treat on other targets dps who try to aoe worms steal my agro because we not have other aoe hit except clap and SW what cd is long and wort only in pull.So now will have at least 3 elite mobs who run around eating dps and in best case i will taunt one.Now someone will counter me with hunter rouge redirect treat.The situation above is for 2-3 sec even if hunter or rouge see what haпpen 1-they even may not have time to react 2-skill on cd.Now about challenge shout let’s say i use 1 in case like above and handle it.In next 1 min situation repeat, now i not have any tool to get situation under control ->wipe.We start situation from above ->wipe.At end people start saying you suck as tank etc.How to explain – we not have any tools what help us in situation like i posted above.(Migol, Lady Deathwhisper is bad example because from side come 3 mobs, no matter 10 or 25 don’t know for heroic yet, and warrior can handle this without even thinking open with taunt for far mob, clap, cleave, revenge no way to get them off from me)I like warriors tank style but gauntlet events stretching my nerves and make me to swear on class.If there anyway to fix this hole warriors can compare to others tanking class even may say will be the best tank class in game.And i see this hole fixed by 2 ways no need new skill.1.clap is like paladin Consecrate/DK – D&D. 2. cleave is like bears Swipe.Give one of this to warrior and i think all warriors will shut up for long time.(My opinion is make cleave to be like Swipe somehow will be more approach warriors tank style)
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Hold on, Warrior tanks can compare to Pally or DK tanks, It’s a question of effort. Whilst DK and Pally tanks can hold the AoE Aggro with a click of a few buttons, to gain the same level of aggro as them “all” a Warrior has to do is work a damn sight harder. This is what sets warriors apart from the other tanking Classes. We ain’t no Faceroll, you want that, go be a Playadin and get carried by your class.
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The only thing that i disagree with..is the fact that warrior tanks do not compare to pally or dk tanks…If you need a boss tank then we are great….but why waste a spot in a raid group on a single target tank when either the dk or pally or even drood can fill multiple rolls on the same raid. The warrior tank has one use. Agreed about tab targetting as well needs to be aggro related to help make it easier. Also agreed that dps particularly ranged dps needs to learn about recount.. Warrior tanks are on the endangered list in my humble opinion.
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Agreeing with bigblake here, personally as a Warrior tank I have no trouble with AoE threat, sure it’s a little harder than pressing one button and letting the mobs run to you. But where’s the point in a game without a challenge? A Warrior version of Consecrate would just mean Warriors were becoming Pallies with a red mana bar – I don’t think anyone wants that to happen.
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jesus, enough with the QQ, your making us warriors look pathetic. Can’t anyone see that GC is doing us a favor? Have any of you played a Prot pally for trash pulls? I keep a pot of coffee at the ready so i dont fall asleep. If they gave warriors a rage-related consecrate there would be QQing from people who actually enjoy war tanking ’cause you actually have to pay attention. less so now because of the revenge buff. If you cant aoe tank as a warrior then you need to take a serious look at your Glyphs/Spec/Playstyle and fix one of them ’cause its a YOU problem not “the class is broken”.
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The last Q and A says it all in my opinion
Q: GC!!!!! All we want is a aoe move that stays on the ground just like Pally and DKs have. Dont have to be a new move just let TC stay on the ground for a few secs and were set.
A: And our concern of doing that is it makes tanking too easy, which risks it becoming boring. We have the same concern about the other classes too.
So then why do all the other classes have it and not warriors? My personal opinion is warrior’s TC SHOULD work just like Consecrate or Death and Decay, that would fix EVERYTHING. I have 3 tanks, warrior, pally and DK, guess which is currently geared for ICC content due to ease of aoe tanking… if you guessed Pally you would be CORRECT.
My warrior is currently around tier8 gear level and a few tier 9 pieces, needless to say I can’t hold threat to save my life against DPS that are in ICC 10/25 gear and I tanked with him for YEARS and NEVER had this level of difficulty. Now take my pally, even when she was much lesser geared compared to those I ran heroics/raids with, AoE threat was NEVER an issue. Yes in a way we are asking for the same easy button as other tanks ALREADY have, but it grows tiresome having to spend most of a pull trying to get aggro back off an 8k+ dps as a warrior, that my Paladin can easily manage with a few keystrokes, IF she ever loses it, which is RARE.
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As a warrior tank myself, I am laughing at all the people QQ’ing about getting AE abilities. Either I’m super special, or everyone else just fails, cause I have no problem keeping aggro on groups of mobs. The only thing that makes it slightly difficult is the tab target system. Take Gundrak for a prime example: You know that first room… Trying to tab and get an elite mob is almost impossible. You first must cycle through about 23489739 snakes before you get to the elite. If blizzard would fix the tab target system to prioritize mobs that have aggro (whether its against the tank or the dps/healz) then I would have no complaints at all about a warriors abilities to AE tank. And yes, I have successfully tanked Ony with another warrior tank and have had no death from the many whelps… that’s cause we handled it!
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The biggest problems are not with the tanking, but with how the DPS approach the game now.
Since WotLK, everything is AOE. Group of mobs? AOE. Two big mobs? AOE.
It used to be that the tank and the DPS worked together. DPS would CC targets, the tank can focus on one or two mobs, and the rest burn them down. Then slowly bring the CC’d targets out and work them down.
The expectation that the tank can just run into a room, grab everything and survive is absurd, yet we have been able to do it throughout this expansion with very few exceptions.
When I tank HoR for example, it is expected that the DPS will control the stupid rifleman. I can heroic throw and catch the mage and the rest pretty much come right in. That’s how we used to do it…
A raid wasn’t about “ooh, I broke 10K on a giant trash AOE when I usually have only 2K single target. I’m l33t”. It was about having the right people fill the right roles to ensure success. And everyone new their roles. And they reshackled, frost trapped, banished or did whatever they had to do to ensure the success of the raid.
We don’t need more AOE abilities. We DPS to learn to play their fsking toons and get back to the strategy of the raid.
hans
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Players > Class = Success.
It’s a simple equation.
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Q: 1) The Paladin and Bears (and possibly DKs) can all AoE tank better than I can.
2) I don’t need another tool to tank; assuming other tank’s AoE threat is being significantly nerfed (though the class previews seem to indicate the opposite is true).
3) AE tanking is not too challenging.
A: This was definitely my assumption. Some posters here seem to be arguing that AE tanking is too challenging and just needs to be made easier.
People currently pick every other tank type above than a warrior for their raids. So if not part of a very big and sympathetic guild – how do the warriors get geared if not picked for runs ?
After spending $15 a month, building a warrior to 80 expecting to tank with him, not knowing other classes are easier to tank with – but most importantly – the other classes are whom raid organizers preferably pick due to it being over all easier, I would have built anything other than a warrior to tank with.
Being hard to tank or wanting more abilities is not the issue – I love the challange – but at least even the playing field for all the tanks so some are not chosen all the time on runs, leaving warriors ungeared and unplayed – like mine.
You see the same thing everyday when people are spamming for Ranged DPS ONLY for ICC runs – leaving meleee (toe to toe) dps in the cold on the big runs – why? because it’s easier with less wipes.
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The way I see it, each tank has its particular advantages that influence the groups they like and the pulls they have difficulty with.
You say that warriors dont have sufficient AoE threat to compete with Paladins? And yet when a warrior is in the raid they are nearly always assumed to be the Main Tank because they take damage so much more healably than any other class, and their single target threat seems to pull away in leaps and bounds compared to paladins… so maybe your dps should learn to “target=focustarget [harm] [nohelp]” instead of spamming their own AoE, knowing that their tank wants to reach through the screen and choke them.
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I don’t know about you guys…but I tank with a cleaving glyph and specced far enough into arms for deep wounds (I understand that’s broken) but given the tools I have, I don’t have any issues with aoe tanking. Also, I have much more single-target threat on my warrior than any of the other tanking classes, which I also use (my pally is the best geared, but all 4 are H-ICC tanks). I’m not understanding the issue here.
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Bleeds like Rogues or Arms warriors apply, would be a little more viable than shortening warriors global cooldowns. Maybe combine abilities like Hamstring and Rend. Something like 10% movement speed and (at level 80) bleeds target for 600-800 over 15 seconds. I know it dont seem like much but classes like rogues do added damage to targets suffering from bleed effects. Maybe we can go back the the old vanillia wow days adn make classes complememt each other instead for replacing others. I played a feral druid prebc, and yes, we raided MC, AQ (ruins and temple) and in the 40 man raid there were atleast 10-15 druids. We replaced Rogues, Warriors, and Priests because of your gifted abilities. Now warriors are getting replaced becasue of hte AOE abilities like Pallies, Death Knights, and Druids have. The best we can do is 2 targets with cleave. How about making Mocking Blow and Cleave combined? And lastly, I feel us as prot warriors need to have a PVP set. Every set is for Arms or Fury. Why not a Prot set for arenas or BattleGrounds?
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I think that Thunder Clap is great. Instead of making it a shorter cooldown, make it higher damage or higher threat. Cleave is decent and usually used in all 3 stances, but should only be an aggro dump on multiple mobs. Shockwave was a great addition to warriors. I dont think warriors should have AOE affects. Devastate would be more used beside aggro gains and sunder stack. Maybe make the AOE’s like Consencrate, Death and Decay, and items like that suffer diminishing returns like in PVP. After every time its used make it 50% less damaging, or less threatening.
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Now.. it seems to me that GC was getting a little testy, when in fact he should right now be his most open to suggestions however they are formatted.
True, he should be a little aggravated over the Q_Q’s- but keep a cool head.. jeese.
Warrior aoe tanking.. now.
Instead of just making the snide comment on making thunder clap spammable, look at the cooldown of Thunder clap (6s) perhaps reducing it down to maybe 5s or 4s? And lowering it’s damage.
Or perhaps have it’s effects, (lowering atk speed) stackable, as in, the first Thunder clap has a 5% reduction, the second application adds it to 10%.
That should also look at cleave, perhaps making it more like a warrior’s hammer of righteousness but instead of all it’s damamge as burst threat, maybe add a small bleed for prot?
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