tanking-pvp
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Does tanking exist in PvP?
I was inspired by a recent discussion thread on the Battle.net forums to talk about PvP tanking. Earlier in Cataclysm, the changes to the tanking mechanic, Vengeance, led to tanking specs suddenly becoming viable damage dealers in PvP. This was removed in 4.3, apparently because it was felt that tanks were too powerful, given their survivability in PvP. Fast forward a few months, and we find some vestiges of PvP in tank specs remain. In mid-level Arena, blood DKs continue to crop up every now and then on survival-centric teams; however, they are not really the most formidable opponent. Their damage output is not so high, and if kited, they can be fairly easily (if slowly) taken down. Many a feral cat druid will shift into bear form to use Frenzied Regeneration and increase their survival, and bear damage is fairly high (for a tank class, at least). However, bears lack the high self-healing of a blood DK, since Vengeance's removal. Should Vengeance be returned to PvP? Frankly, I don't think so. Does tanking have a place in PvP? Should anyone PvP as a tank? Does tanking even exist in PvP? Well, let's have a think about that. What is tanking? Tanking, in a PvE sense, is the act of ensuring the enemy is attacking you and not your weaker allies. If a PvE enemy is attacking a healer, the tank is doing something wrong.
Ghostcrawler: Vengeance not a fun toy for PvP
A lot of people seem somewhat terrified of the new Vengeance mechanic and how it might play in PvP. People are always leery of tanking specs in PvP, due to the general tendency of people playing in arenas and BGs to want to, you know, kill the other guys. Tanks are generally designed to be harder to kill, which tends to make people nervous, especially when tanking specs saw increased damage output in Wrath of the Lich King and went from "Hey, guys, look, it's a free kill!" to "Wait, you mean trying to burn down the dude specced and geared to not die is a bad idea?" The forums seem to be rampant with terror that Vengeance will rule them all. I personally don't see the concern. Vengeance doesn't stack up terribly fast and it falls off fairly quickly; you'd need to focus fire a tank for significant levels of damage while he was being focus healed (and you'd need to completely ignore his or her healers) in order for Vengeance to really be a concern. But don't take my word for it -- just ask Ghostcrawler. Not only do the developers not think Vengeance will be an issue in PvP, if it turns out to be, they'll just turn it off. Ghostcrawler - Re: So Vengeance... am I doing this wrong? Q u o t e: In group PvP, there is an answer to vengeance. Don't attack the tank. Vengeance is a really good idea imo. If you are sitting on a tank and stacking that buff up, why shouldn't they do comparable damage? And from my experience, even with a max stacked vengeance, the coils between blood and unholy are relatively the same. Also, there is more to DPS between the two specs than Deathcoil. Even if someone is sitting on my blood DK I can assuredly say Unholy and Frost do more overall DPS, in pvp. If a couple of people are beating on a tank, Vengeance isn't likely to stack very high. You need to take damage that is a big chunk of your whole health pool, which typically only bosses are available to provide. Now if you have several folks beating on a tank flag carrier, then Vengeance may stack up, but once you have several people, you almost certainly have a way to dispel the Vengeance or just CC the tank. If Vengeance ever gets to be a problem in PvP, we'll just remove it, plain and simple. The mechanic is only there to help with raid gear scaling, not to give tanks a fun toy for PvP. source
