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The actual problem, in our minds, is threat scaling. Warriors (and all tanks) could AE tank just fine in Naxxramas.* It only became a problem overtime when the dps of the dps classes grew so much more quickly than the tanks, largely because the dps classes have so many dps stats on their gear while plate tanks have Strength. Tank damage was pretty close to 50% of dps damage in the first tier of content, which was our goal, but has slipped to 25 to 30% of dps (your mileage may vary) in Icecrown.
We need a system that keeps tank damage scaling at the same rate as dps damage. However, that system can't be dependent on gear stats (unless you're willing to see tank gear go away) and isn't as ridiculous as deep talents that say "You get 5 AP per point of Strength."
I think you just notice threat issues more on AE pulls because things like Tricks and Misdirect mask any problems on single target pulls. Separate problem.
And yes Paladin tank AE damage and threat generation is still too high, largely because of Seals and HoR, but long-term we're going to nerf that instead of making all tanks able to trivially maintain threat in all situations. Referencing the other thread on the threat a little, why as a tank would you even care what buttons you push if maintaining threat is a foregone conclusion?
* - AE tanking was fine in Naxxramas. AE damage was, and has remained, over the top. We prefer a model where the risk of tanking too many mobs is that the tank dies, not that you can't maintain threat on them all (within reasonable limits of course). We also prefer a model where the dps do AE damage on some pulls and switch to single target dps on others.
Yes, you're balanced around it. Yes, I can read the tooltip on the talents. I'm saying the solution, in our minds, is not "I hit Thunderclap and it autocrits, applies Rend to everyone and then ticks for 10,000 K for the next 30 minutes." We might as well just remove the cooldown from Challenging Shout if that's how Tclap is going to play.
Dude pulled aggro does not represent a failure of class design any more than you sometimes dying represents a failure of class design. Both are going to happen sometimes unless you're absolutely at the top of your game. That's part of the challenge of playing your role. For our part, we'll make sure you have the tools to do your job, and for the most part you do. I don't think the tools are the issue, as I said above.
I'm talking philosophy here, because I assume that's usually more interesting to a wider audience. Philosophically, tank threat generation is working correctly (i.e. as we intend) with perhaps 4-5 exceptions that we would like to fix:
1) Paladins can do a little too much AE tanking "splash" damage, often without even setting out to do so.
2) Tricks and MD take too much of a burden off of the tank / hide issue #3.
3) Damage and therefore threat generation aren't scaling well at very high levels of gear. <-- this is the big one.
4) There is too much incentive to AE every pull, which puts a burden on the tank to AE tank every pull.
5) You could probably add that bears need a button to hit besides Swipe.
I don't think they're going to go back to the days of CCing every pull. I mean, I think they tried that with the new ICC heroics and we can see how well that worked out. What they'll do is make it attractive to want to CC, but it won't be mandatory. Holding aggro won't be the problem. It will be dying from the healer going OOM or not being able to spam heal the tank fast enough. Of course, once a tier or two passes and everyone overgears the instance it will go back to being an AoE-fest.
Yeah, overgearing the content is fine. Being able to zerg an instance is one of the fun parts of overgearing. We're not worried about that. But on content at appropriate level, it wouldn't be so bad if *some* of the pulls required more crowd control and single-target damage.
Can we please get some sort of definition of "long-term" in regards to goals? We're CONSTANTLY being told that you have all these "long-term" goals all the while, we're sitting here playing in an environment knowing that the people behind the game aren't happy with the current state of it. Couple that with the "we're keeping an eye on it" and you have yourself some really frustrated players when push comes to shove.
"Long term" is a way I try and caveat "soon." I can't give any more specific timelines than that or players get really upset if we change our minds or miss those timelines. There are players who get frustrated when we announce Cataclysm changes, because they want those changes *now*. Sorry. I try and be as honest as I can be about things given the realities of the situation.
Wait, what? Both ToT and MD work brainlessly well on AE moves (FoK / Volley) for producing often-amazing threat leads for the tank on every single mob in a pack. I'd argue that threat issues become more noticeable when you're missing Rogues/Hunters, which gets to my next point ...
Fair enough. My point was more that tanks would probably be complaining a lot more about single-target threat in Icecrown without rogues and hunters. Using Tricks or Misdirect on a pull or when new adds show up feels awesome for the rogue / hunter and tank. Using them rotationally to keep threat high feels crappy for both. The tank feels gimp and the dps dude is annoyed by the maintenance required. For sake of argument, imagine that Misdirect and Tricks have the taunt tooltip that specifies the threat transfer only happens if the enemy is not already attacking the target.
As I've said, it doesn't really work that way though. Say you need 300 hit (using arbitrary numbers here) and your tier set provides 250 hit and you get the rest from gems and jewelry. Everything's cool. Now a new patch comes out and your tier set has 230 hit. No problem. You get rid of some of the gems and jewelry. Now a new patch comes out and your tier set has 240 hit. Now you curse Blizzard every time an item drops with hit on it.
In short, later gear has more of the same stat on it. When the stats are easily capped, the larger pools become hard to work around. I compared it today to playing Tetris with really large pieces. It's hard to make the puzzle work.
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