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Tankadin gear updates
I've always though the biggest problem with Paladin tanking was gear (well, ever since I realized Paladins can tank, that is). Plate seems to come, for the most part, in three kinds: physical DPS gear, with strength, agility, and crit rating; tanking gear, with +defense, stamina, etc.; and caster gear, with Intellect, mana per 5, spell damage, and so forth. None of these three types is ideal for Paladin tanking -- if you take tank plate, you miss out on spell damage, and if you take caster plate, you miss out on stamina, +defense, and avoidance stats. The devs have heard this concern, and are planning to address it in 2.1.0. Ommra delivers: As previously promised I passed this on to the developers. I took the liberty of summarising the thread; basically saying that what you are after is gear with +Stamina, +Defense and +Spell damage, and that you are not very keen on +Intelligence and MP5 (Youngblood emphasised the need for more HP and damage mitigation instead). The devs have read this and thought it sounded fair enough. Paladin tanking gear is going to be more geared towards tanking/hp so this concern should be addressed in the next content patch. So, again, thank you for compiling this and helping me passing your concerns on to the devs.Looks pretty good to me. Paladins, what do you guys think? Have I got your gear situation totally wrong? This is good news, right?[via PaladinSucks]
One tank to rule them all? Devs say no.
As a healer, I feel like I get a decent view on tank performance. And by now I've had a chance to heal for all three primary tanking classes: Warrior, Paladin, and Druid. From my point of view, both a Paladin and a Druid make excellent tanks when specced for it; in fact, in BC I'd say they tank better than a Warrior. Post-patch, if I had to pick a ranking, I'd say Pally > Druid > Warrior (Druid would've been on top pre-patch), but that really depends on player, gear, and environment. I asked a few guildies (a shadow Priest, experienced in pulling aggro, and a player who's tanked as both a Pally and a Warrior both made themselves available for extended comment; one more each of Druid, Pallie, and Warrior gave quick shout-ins), and here's what emerged (combined with my own observations):
Druids get a hotfixy gift
From a hotfix that is now live on the servers: The Druid ability Lacerate will now land a small amount of instant damage, causing it to generate threat against bleed-immune creatures. The Druid ability Mangle (Bear) will now generate 50% bonus threat So good news for druids who tank. Blizzard isn't completely giving them back all of their DPS-- Lacerate's debuff doesn't affect "skeletal" creatures (as it shouldn't, since they can't bleed), and Mangle doesn't give any more damage, but Blizzard says they realize Mangle works best as a "snap aggro" tool, and with the bonus threat, it should do that. I'm sure droods will still have their problems, but these are two nice buffs for tanking druids, no question.More are on the way, too-- Blizzard says they plan to up the armor on many high end Bear Druid items, "particularly raid sets," as many druids felt that those pieces didn't scale as well as warriors' did. Those changes, says Blue, won't be coming until 2.1.0, but they are coming.
A realistic look at druid tanking
Druids have received some significant changes in the coming 2.0.10 patch, but while there's lots of complaint and speculation, there's little agreement on what the changes will actually do for druids. But the loudest complaint is that druids will no longer be able to tank and will be once more reduced to a pure healing role. Note that there are no changes to cat or moonkin effectiveness or damage output, which does leave DPS as an option (in both PvE and PvP) -- but with so many classes able to DPS and so few classes able to heal, druids are reasonably concerned about being marginalized. The facts on bears from the patch notes are as follows: Bear/dire bear form's health bonus has changed from +25% health to +25% stamina. While this sounds like a non-change, this means that +health enchants and health-increasing potions or flasks are no longer considered in the bonus calculation, resulting in a loss of health for some druids. Dire bear form's armor bonus has been reduced from +450% to +400%. The talent Savage Fury no longer affects mangle (bear), maul, or swipe. Savage Fury previously increased damage done by those abilities by 20% for two talent points. The ability lacerate is the only bear ability that is not effected by this change, but only because it wasn't effected by the talent previously. (This talent will still have benefits to cat form, but no longer benefits any abilities in bear form.) The talent Predatory Instincts has been changed from a critical damage increase of 3/6/9/12/15% to a critical damage increase of 2/4/6/8/10%. The rage normalization equation has been adjusted to grant more rage. While we won't know the full story until the final changes hit the live realms, by piecing together some of the data coming from players on the PTRs, I think we can make some reasonable guesses. Curious? Keep reading.
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Adventures in Beta: Off-spec tankland
One of the first things you'll notice in The Burning Crusade is that just about everyone is an "off-spec." Since the primary focus of the first months of TBC will be to level as fast as you can, most people choose the highest damage-dealing talent build they can have for more efficient soloing. This makes perfect sense while everyone's soloing, but what do you do when you get into an instance? The old paradigm of "warrior, healer, three damage-dealers" goes out the window. The most startling boost to off-specs is what's happened to feral druids and protection pallies. Before BC, almost all parties used a warrior as a tank. But because of increased threat generation for properly-specced druids and a general increase in paladin tanking abilities, both druids and pallies have been tanking endgame instances without too much difficulty. Druids now have better threat generation than warriors, making them possibly superior tanks for aggro-sensitive fights. Monday night, I tagged along as what I assumed to be an experienced bear druid tanked two wings of Hellfire Citadel without issue -- and then changed into nearly full Tier 3 to show us that this wasn't exactly what he usually did in instances. Given that warriors were always the primary tanks of Warcraft, it's not surprising that the new competition from paladins and druids has some warriors a bit miffed. In a totally non-scientific poll on the beta forums, 90 percent of respondents preferred non-warrior tanks for 5-man instances (according to the poll's author, a rogue.) What do you think? Should paladins and druids have equal tanking skills to warriors, or should warriors always be the first choice when a party is looking for a meat shield?
Forum Post of the Day: Druid tanks from a healing perspective
There's little discussion on this post so far, but the few posts in the thread thus far are rather interesting. As far as tanking goes, the warrior has always been king, with a much wider array of abilities to hold aggro and reduce their own damage taken. But when the Burning Crusade hits store shelves, druids and paladins will both find themselves with a wider array of tanking abilities -- druids with a hardier bear form and paladins with a much nicer protection tree. And while I still feel that protection warriors will be the cream of the crop, I wonder if druids and paladins won't offer their own advantages -- in certain situations. However, warriors and paladins maintain the advantage of block and parry, neither of which druids are capable of. But whether this means druids will be the Burning Crusade's third class tank or whether their immense stamina and armor ratings make up for it -- I think I'll really have to get some experience with it before I could decide.Forum Post of the Day attempts to highlight interesting and constructive posts (I know, I know -- I'm severely restricting the available options!) from the official forums. Seen a post recently that's made you think? Let us know about it!
Healers and their extra heals
Hal over in the WoW Ladies lj forum posts a really interesting question: What is a priest's (or other healer's) responsibility on all those "extra heals"? For example, it's when a pet needs healing, or when a warlock lifetaps their way down to almost no health. To those, I'd add healing for warriors and other melee classes after a fight, when everything is dead.Personally, I'm pretty conservative. On one side, I've played a priest and a resto shaman, and I will throw a lifetapped warlock a heal only when I'm at full mana and impatient to start the fight. Otherwise, he should be eating-- I shouldn't have a responsibility to heal him after he's hurt himself. Now, some guildie warlocks I like, and I'll do it anyway. But I don't think there should be a responsibility there. As for pets, I'll heal them in a fight 1) when we need them, and 2) when I've got mana left. If I'm healing the main tank with little to spare, sorry, but your kitty is gonna die. But if your VW is the only thing between me and a melee add, I'll keep him alive. Still, I don't think any pet class should ever count on heals unless the situation has called for it. Pet classes have ways to heal their pets for a reason.On the other side of things, as a warrior, if I'm out of a fight and still hurt, I make it a point to be eating or bandaging before the priest even has a chance to look at me. With mages around and food extremely cheap, there's no reason a priest should have to waste mana in between pulls, even if it's as simple as throwing a HoT on. Carry some bandages (no excuse for not having runecloth), or eat that bread ASAP.Of course, there are lots and lots of exceptions. Most priests I know will heal me anyway out of combat. And as a priest I'll usually throw off a few extra heals before I drink, including a few to the pets. But as for responsibilities, I think there should be as few as possible on both sides. Your thoughts?
Breakfast Topic: I tank, you tank, she tanks
Quote of the evening last night: "we need war druids cant tank". (Of course, two druids proceeded to tank, presumably confusing this particular group member.)What defines a 'good' tank? What do you look for when selecting which group member should take on the onerous duty of being hit a lot? As a tank, what do you look for in a group?Having spent much of my time until level 60 in PuGs, I have something of a fear of tanking. Despite being a feral druid (for the most part), my experiences with random people have been universally dismal. To give you some idea, the best run I'd had for a long time was the Stockades, an instance which is loathed by many players.From the tank's point of view, it really helps to have group members who understand -- and listen. Those who realise it takes time to build up aggro, and don't rush in immediately with killer DPS. Those who realise that sometimes the squishies shouldn't do all the pulling. Those who appreciate the problems of adds -- or too much to handle -- and yell if they're in trouble. I've encountered everything from crazy DPS shadow priests to tanking mages, and most of it puts me off tanking with strangers -- but it's a dirty job, and someone's gotta do it.
Tanking for Druids
Of course druids are a highly versatile hybrid class, but sometimes you want to maximize your ability in a single area. And in this case knowledge - knowing what you want to do and how best to accomplish it - is power. With this in mind, I present Alterreality's excellent post with regards to bear and warrior tanks, which is full of hard, numerical data and clearly shows a druid's strengths in tanking (high HP and armor) and weaknesses (lack of available leather defense gear, inability use shields, etc). Overall, it sounds like a warrior's access to defense gear (reducing critical strikes against them) starts to be more and more beneficial on more and more difficult bosses, making them the only obvious choice for end-game content. What do you think - can druids hold up to the tanking ability of a warrior?
Upcoming Paladin Changes
Details remain scarce, but it looks like paladins may have some positive changes in their future, primarily to make them more capable tanks. (Though Eyonix's phrasing, which states that improving tanking ability is "one of their goals" begs the question as to what their other goals might be.) Paladins can look forward to the following in upcoming patches: Holy Shield: while this ability does generate threat (though this is note stated on the tool tip), the amount of threat it causes is being reviewed. Righteous Fury: is currently not generating the proper amount of threat for all holy damage. This should be fixed in 1.10. Other Abilities: all threat-generation abilities are being reviewed, and paladins can expect to see other threat generation skills improving over "the next few patches." Protection Tree: will be getting a review to make it "more appealing."
