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Shifting Perspectives: Tanks and the barrier to entry
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we have cause to reflect on something written by our esteemed colleague Archmage Pants: "Tanking is an interesting thing. It makes you hate everyone else in the party." It comes as no shock to a longtime player that WoW's social culture is riddled with a number of real-life counterparts, and one of the more troublesome is something called the barrier to entry. In real life, this refers to the difficulty of becoming a qualified professional in a given field, and there are some jobs where the barrier to entry is very high indeed. Take neurosurgery, for example. Ideally, you want to be completely sure of someone's aptitude for the job before you let them take a buzzsaw to your skull. Society relies on the grueling education and residency required to be a neurosurgeon to weed out anyone prone to use of the word, "Oops." While there's nothing in WoW that comes close to the seriousness of getting a competent surgeon, most players would acknowledge that there are similarities between the RL and in-game version of the "barrier to entry." I'd argue that the comparison is strongest when you're discussing tanks. Tanks, and more importantly, beginner tanks who could potentially ease the tank shortage that causes lengthy queue times for DPS in the Dungeon Finder, have to hurdle a series of problems in the effort to become geared and experienced. Some of these problems are the result of deliberate design choices on Blizzard's part, but the larger share is the consequence of a playerbase that needs tanks but is (ironically) hostile to beginners. Everyone wants an experienced professional. Nobody wants to be there for the learning process. And if you're a beginner tank, there's a lot of crap in your way that Blizzard didn't put there.
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for prot warriors
Well, we knew the times would be a changing with Cataclysm, but how much they're going to change has been revealed, and it's quite a lot all told. For warrior tanks, what are the big issues? Block will be heavily redesigned. There will be no more block value of any kind and all blocks will remove 30% of a blocked attack's damage. Block rating will still improve your chance to block as it does now, but if you do block an attack, rather than the current system where you block (as an example) 2000 damage because you have a shield block value of 2000, you'll block 30% of whatever the damage would have been. This means a gimmick block set won't make you invulnerable to trash mobs, but also that block will be more useful against bosses who hit for 50k. (A boss who hits for 50k now would hit for 48k using our hypothetical block value. He'd hit for 35k with the new system, as 30% of 50k is 15k.) This also means that Shield Slam will need some other method of calculating its damage. More changes after the break.
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: What the Vitality change means for warriors
Yes, another day, another set of patch notes for the 3.3.3 PTR. At present we're looking at the following changes for warriors: Revenge: Damage done by this ability (base and scaling) increased by 50%. Talents Fury Rampage: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc from critical strikes. Protection Vitality: Now boosts Stamina by 3/6/9%, up from 2/4/6%. Strength and expertise benefits have not changed. The most recent change is of course the change to Vitality, making each talent point spent in the ability that much better. Frankly, I don't know a warrior tank without it anyway, so it's basically just a straightforward 'more betterer' situation. (Yes, I did butcher that particularly horribly.) But what it basically reveals is that while you may believe one thing or another about how warriors are faring as tanks (I'm personally not particularly upset about where I am as a tank right now) the fact remains that any adjustments being made are being made in small increments. Course corrections rather than radical changes in direction, you could say. The recent change to Devastate (that required a hotfix to fully implement) lead to the Revenge change. Similarly, the recent hotfix to Paladins Sacred Duty talent (the class had the best stamina scaling because unlike other tanks they had two talents that affected it, Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise) leads directly to this recent buff to Vitality. Even with this change, Vitality won't provide as much health as these two talents maxed, of course, but it'll bring tanks closer which is clearly a long term goal of the tanking design in Wrath of the Lich King. It remains to be seen if this talent change makes it to live... I could see the strength being buffed to match stamina as a means to add more sustained prot DPS (one of their stated goals) or the change reverted totally. That is, after all, what public test realms are for, testing things.
More tanking changes for warriors
After the changes to Devastate made in an attempt to 'buff warrior tank DPS' (I'm sure you all remember our coverage of said change) many warriors reported that one of the side effects of this change was to make Revenge, a long time warrior tanking ability, less than useful. With Devastate threat up (especially when glyphed) there's just less reason to use Revenge when it lights up. Now, Ghostcrawler interjects into a post that yes, Revenge will likely see some changes. This is interesting to me for two reasons. First, because it's a fairly rapid statement of intent compared to past issues, where months could pass before anyone would address an issue (Thunder Clap only hitting four targets, for example, which was a huge problem for warriors for most of BC) and secondly because it highlights the domino effect that changing class abilities can have and showcases just how difficult class balance really can be. They knew even when they were making the change to Devastate that this might be necessary, but they understandably wanted to roll out any changes in an incremental way. My expectation is either a threat buff for Revenge (which, frankly, isn't really all that interesting a change), a DPS increase (which isn't likely) or perhaps a small bit of AoE viability like a cleave effect. That last bit would be a good way of adding some AoE bite without replicating the paladin model which we've already been told is a touch over the top.
Tanking hotfixes being implemented
A recent hotfix has reduced the health on tanking paladins. Meanwhile, devastate is being hotfixed as well to do 20% more total damage rather than 20% more weapon damage (from 100% to 120% total weapon damage presently). There are also some scattered reports that DK tanks have gotten buffs to their Frost Presence as well, but no confirmation from Blizzard on that yet. Ghostcrawler posted that the change to Paladin health was intentional and that an announcement will be soon, and in the warrior thread said that they can't confirm when the hotfix for devastate will drop. The culprit for the paladin health reduction seems to be the paladin talent Sacred Duty, although this has, at this time, not been confirmed by Blizzard so far as I can find. As soon as there's an announcement we at WoW.com will of course bring it to you. Edited to include this link to the official forum post explaining the change. Thanks to ummeiko for the fast catch.
Growing Pains: How to approach gearing up your tank
I'm going to assume that if you're still reading this past the title, you're interested in talking about tank gearing for your level 80 and that you've presumably used the Dungeon Finder to level him or her as a tank, but you're certainly not rocking full T9 yet. It's generally accepted that you'll be saving up emblems for that, and of course filling the gaps for rings and trinkets and such as you can. You also may be a DPS player who wants to switch over to tanking but don't have the gear yet. First off, please, don't pass on tanking gear just because it's blue or dropped in a normal or heroic. Just because it's not iLevel 232+ doesn't mean it's not good. You should be collecting and using upgrades as they drop, even if they won't immediately put you at 35K health. Please remember also that a lot of people ran these instances and heroics back when Wrath first released with 22k or so health: despite what speed obsessed or hyper geared players will tell you, it is indeed possible to tank all the original Wrath heroics in blues. Take the Nerubian Shield Ring, for example. If this drops and you don't have better, roll need on it. Don't worry that people will lose their shard, don't let people give you grief on gear not being up to some ridiculous standard, just take the ring. It has armor, defense and stamina. If you're there as DPS but you want to build a tank set? Roll need if you don't have better. Just ignore people who give you grief over it, clearly they don't understand how important every possible upgrade is while building a tanking set.
Upcoming tier 10 tank armor stat changes
With Icecrown Citadel's unpopular Chill of the Throne debuff, or as we like to call it, "Getting out of Dodge," tanks have had to re-prioritize in terms of avoidance and mitigation stats to the point where tier 10 gear might not be as desirable as Blizzard intended. Thankfully, they appear to have realized this, and change is coming! To tier 10 tank gear, anyway. Blizzard CM Zarhym posted a note on the official forums announcing their plans for said gear: "We recognize that many plate tanks are making their gear choices based on the amount of armor they're provided, as this is currently the most preferred stat. In order to make the tier-10 plate tanking sets more desirable, we will be adjusting the stats on the gloves and chest pieces in order to inflate the amount of armor they provide in the next minor patch. This will apply to all item levels of the tier-10 death knight, warrior, and paladin tanking gloves and chest pieces." He also noted that Emblem gear will continue to be comparable to the tier gear in terms of stats and, for those concerned about Feral tanks, they'll be keeping an eye on gear scaling on druid tank gear as well.
Officers' Quarters: The fourth tank's lament
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. It's no secret that tanks are generally in short supply. Blizzard has admitted as much and even designed the Death Knight class specifically to entice more people to taking up the tanking role. They've gone away from fights like the notorious, original implementation of the Four Horsemen encounter that required 8 fully geared tanks and given us more fights like Rotface that only require 2. But for a 25-player raid, you generally need 3. So what about those fourth tanks? They find themselves riding the pine: Dear Scott, I have been playing WoW for just under four months and have worked my butt off to make my Warrior the best tank that I possibly can. I get numerous compliments about my ability and pride myself on being liked by all. I have joined one of the top raiding guilds on my server, but I am finding problems getting selected for raids. Currently we raid 3 nights a week, and on average, we have 35-40 people showing up EVERY raid night. Obviously, you cannot take 40 people into ICC25 and therein lies the problem. The current state of raids encourages guilds to take 3 tanks at most, and at times, the third tank is running in an offspec, most likely dps. I am one of five tanks in the guild, and the newest of the bunch. All gear is about equal. The other four get selected for raids on a nightly basis based on seniority. I have remained diligent and have shown up for raids every night without fail, only to be told there is no need for me tonight.
How not to aggro your tank with AoE
Reader UnstØppable writes in with a question I thought would benefit others: "Does the Bladestorm aggro problem ever get better? What I mean is, I've seen it countless times, the arms warrior enters the dungeon, the tank lets out a sigh (sometimes it's me), we pull the first group and everything goes fine, until he hits that Bladestorm button. That's when somehow he manages to pull aggro from every mob and their mom and makes both the healer's and the tank's lives hell or usually ends up dying within seconds." Part of the problem here is that certain classes/specs have no aggro dump or reduction ability and as a result their big DPS moves generate a lot of threat. Arms warriors, most DPS death knights (at least the blood and unholy specs I've used) and retribution paladins have limited aggro reduction at best (pallies at least have Hand of Salvation but that's a band aid at best) and while tanking threat (especially AoE tanking threat) requires ramp up time, it's very easy to hit the Divine Storm, Death and Decay, Pestilence, Whirlwind or Bladestorm buttons. (Enhancement shamans with Spirit Weapons seem to be okay, I rarely pull aggro even when I go nuts with Fire Nova.)
Breakfast Topic: What roles do you play?
An interesting thread popped up on the forums a few days ago that I wanted to ask our readers about here at WoW.com -- what roles have you tried in the game, and has experimentation with other roles changed how you play overall? Right now my main spends her time tanking and healing at an even 50/50 split. Healing's made me a more observant tank; I have a better appreciation of what a heal team goes through to keep my furry rump alive. Tanking hasn't exactly made me a better healer -- the two roles are so different that I even wind up redoing a portion of my UI while jumping between them -- but it's made me more forgiving of tank mistakes, and also left me in a better position to gauge whether a problem is the result of the tank or another group member. Damage-wise? Oddly enough, playing as a tank/healer for so long has made me into a hesitant DPS at best. I hate losing aggro to anyone as a tank, and hate healing oblivious DPS who pull it, and that's made me incredibly paranoid about my threat as a DPS. I watch Omen way more than I worry about my rotation. So what role do you normally play in the game? If you change roles at all, do you notice experience from one role having an effect on how you play others?
WoW Rookie: Leveling a paladin tank
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide. Want to level your paladin as a tank? You got it! Before the Dungeon Finder tool was launched in December, finding level-appropriate instance groups was well nigh impossible. Occasional knots of newborn death knights might putter about in a favorite Burning Crusade instance to scoop up some gear. The rest of the pre-Northrend instances remained ghost towns, populated only by speed-running level 80s who were farming or running low-level buddies through some quick levels. But the Dungeon Finder has re-invigorated the instances of Azeroth, Outland and beyond. What does that mean for leveling players? If you love to play in groups and instances or if you're looking ahead to raiding and want to lay down your skill base now, you can.
Lichborne: A death knight primer for tanking 5-man dungeons
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly death knight column. This week, your host is in a bit of a tanking mood. Those Emblems of Frost don't earn themselves! So when the Dungeon Finder came out, it was pretty cool even for DPS. A 10 minute wait for a DPS slot for a 5-man dungeon is pretty insanely awesome. If nothing else, it was certainly faster than the old way of sitting in Dalaran for 2 hours picking your nose and watching the LFG channel. Now that the dungeon finder has been around for a while though, things are getting a bit stickier for DPS. My server averages around 15-20 minutes for a level 80, and I've heard some battlegroups are up to 30-45 minutes, even at prime time. To make matters worse, tanks and healers can continue to boast instant or near-instant queues almost everywhere, leaving the poor DPS green with envy. Now technically, this is how it's almost always worked. Tanks and Healers get groups pretty quick, DPS has to wait around. And all told, the dungeon finder system is still pretty cool, and you still get a group faster than the old way. That said, now that we've had a taste of true power, I'm sure we're all loathe to lose it. Luckily, death knights have an out: We can go tank. Whether you're a DPS DK considering going tank for shorter queue times, or a 5-man DK tank newbie looking to up their game, this column's for you.
You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry
When writing this Breakfast Topic I noticed in the comments a certain disconnect between how I approach running heroics and how other people seem to. So I thought I'd try and encapsulate the differences and try and help explain why sometimes tanks seem a little touchy or off in runs. It's not just the blows to the head, guys.
The Daily Quest: The real rockstar
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. "When is a rockstar tank not a rockstar?" asks the Big Bear Butt. Merrymaker Lissiel says "These types of weapons are good for all resto druids, and everyone should either be getting a staff with haste, or a main hand + off-hand haste combo." Matticus proclaims loudly and proudly, "I learned 7 important healing lessons from this one quest!" Spicytuna turns towards Blizzard and asks, "Why can't we give thumbs down to the dungeons we don't like, just as we can in WarCraft III?" "This has been a crazy year," muses Pikestaff as the hunter takes a trip down memory lane. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Use brute force, Luke
Usually, I am the 'perfectionist tank' in a run. I want things to go perfectly: I want to never lose aggro, I want the DPS to all attack the proper target, I want the healer to, well, okay, I mostly just want the healer to heal us, I'm not looking for anything fancy there. As long as a healer seems to be casting healing spells I'm willing to cut her or him a lot of slack, especially in dungeons like Halls of Reflection where people often die through not moving out of giant, inky pools of blackness on the floor that they stand in as if they were instead duck ponds full of adorable baby ducklings. There are no ducklings in the fetid wells of corruption, guys. Last night, however, I had a sort of small revelation. First and foremost, I was stressing myself way the heck out over a pick up group with four folks I was likely never to see again. Secondly, the faster you go in a PuG, the less likely perfection is to be attainable, and if four people want speed and one guy wants flawless, you'll get very fast flaws. So that meant I've come up with an entirely new tanking philosophy for the new five mans, and an entirely new way to gear for them. I'd talk about both.
Attacking the holy trinity of MMOs
If you've played MMOs for any length of time, you've probably grown very familiar with the trinity. You can't help but be acquainted with it in any sort of group content, where in more games than not there's that split between the tank, the healer, and the DPS. Certainly there are subdivisions and extra roles, but for the most part those extra roles are slight twists on one of the existing roles. (Controllers in City of Heroes are DPS with a debuffing/controlling aspect and slightly less damage, for instance). Brian "Psychochild" Green has an article on Gamasutra examining the issues with the holy trinity in game design: what purposes it serves, what its drawbacks are, and how useful it might be to get rid of it entirely. Examining the roots of the trinity design in Dungeons & Dragons and common gameplay types it offered, Green goes on to take a look at how the structure has become codified, what other potential systems could be put in place, and if there's even an advantage to doing so. He discusses the issues of hybrid classes, group versus solo design, and proposes a potential alternative that remains rooted in the core elements of the design. Anyone with an interest in design should take a look at the full article, as it contains some interesting insights and analysis of one of the core underpinnings of our genre.
Dungeon Finder tricks and tips
When we last talked about this on the podcast, I said we'd basically have to wait and see how it all worked, but now that players have had their hands on the Dungeon Finder out on the live realms for a while, they're learning a few more tricks and tips about how to use it. As Rohan brings up over on the WoW Ladies LJ, it's easy enough to keep a good player once you've found them through the system: as long as none of you drop group once you're done with an instance, you can go back in and run as many as you want. Unfortunately, you can't friend them yet (hopefully that will show up whenever Battle.net functionality does), but the comments on that post point out that if you both sign up for an unpopular instance at the same time, chances are good you'll end up in the same group together (of course, that requires coordination, but maybe you can set up a time out of game). More tips and tricks for the new system after the break.
Dungeon Finder reactions from players
The long-awaited Dungeon Finder is finally out on the servers, and people have had a few days with it now, so let's jump in and gauge some early reactions. Overall, it seems to be a big hit -- tanks and healers are jumping into groups right away, and while we've heard of longer waits for DPS, it doesn't seem bad at all. While of course the initial flood of people brought instance servers down (I'd expect to see the same thing happen during peak time this weekend), everything seems to be working well since then: disenchanters are correctly dropping items out, loot is getting distributed correctly, and groups are doing what they were always supposed to do: rake in the badges and rewards for players. Hots and Dots actually has a long take on the Dungeon Finder, including "15 Things You Should Know," like that tanks and healers are still as important as ever (if you sign up for DPS and another role, you likely won't be doing DPS), and that we're finding out very quickly just how skilled or knowledgeable people really are ("the Party Leader will be forced to confess midway [through] that they actually know nothing about the instance").
Tank opportunities in the late endgame
I've been tangling with the tough issue of tanking again lately -- I have finally leveled up my paladin to 80, and ideally, the plan is to jump in as a dual specced tank and healer when patch 3.3 hits. All LFG all the time, eventually headed to higher level raiding. But Honor's Code has a good post up this weekend about the trouble that many tanks are facing lately -- they say that while there's lots of tanking to be had in the early endgame (every 5-man and heroic group out there needs a tank), the available positions narrow down as you get farther up. By the time you're reaching Icecrown (which I would like to do someday), there are so relatively few guilds raiding there and so few serious tanking spots within those guilds that you either have to be a really great tank, know someone who's in charge, or be ready to switch off to another spec or alt when necessary. In essence, they're saying there's a glass ceiling for tanks. Once you reach a certain point, it's hard to find even the opportunity to be a solid tank.
The Light and How to Swing It: The low level tank part 1
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. For the next couple weeks we'll be taking a look at low level dungeon runners. Cross-realm instancing is coming in patch 3.3 and along with it will be the ability for low level characters to finally find those level appropriate groups for old world dungeons. Being that those parties will need tanks, we thought we'd take a look at what an up and coming paladin needs to know about dungeons as well as what types of gear and stats to be on the lookout for. We're going to start with tanking and then move on to healing and damage-dealing in the weeks to come.
