.jpg)
There are a lot of huge changes in the expansion though. Warrior tanks are worried they won't be useful anymore because their big niche (surviving crushing blows) was given to all tanks. Paladin tanks are concerned because better AE threat is being given to all tanks. Death knight tanks are worried that they are going to get nerfed because of the damage they're doing. Druids are worried that they won't have the armor they are used to, and might be inferior tanks because of it. Almost every class is worried that their unique raid buff won't gaurantee them a spot in the raid any longer. We're worried about pulling it all off. :)
The thing of it is, that was never the warrior's niche in the first place. With shield block having two charges in 5 seconds, warriors were almost guaranteed to take a crushing blow every so often thanks to haste or dual wielders or anything that has more than 2 attacks every 5 seconds. Paladins, with their holy shield having 8 charges every 10 seconds, were almost guaranteed to never take a crushing blow in that time unless lag or silence was in play. Of the three tanking classes, warriors were the middle ground between no crushes and always being crushed.
Heck, this is why druids were favored over warriors on Morogrim - because a warrior would quickly be depleted of shield block charges and could easily take a crush, a druid was better simply because if you're going to take a crush, you might as well take as little damage as possible anyway.
This is the sort of thing that makes me really concerned about the direction of tanking in WotLK. I know the devs are smart, and they're good, but they have some bizarre notions of what the classes actually did in the past. The devs seem to believe that feral druid tanking in BC was somehow bad and that a bear couldn't MT things on progression, yet feral druids are advantaged in some way on every single encounter in Sunwell but one, and the top guild in the world (SK-Gaming) has two feral druids as their main tanks. The devs believe that a warrior's niche was the inability to take crushing blows, but the warrior niche in TBC was outstanding top-end threat combined with being the best tank against magic-based bosses. A paladin doesn't care about other tanks getting their AoE abilities, because who cares who is requested for 5-mans? They care about being able to MT, and for that they need oh shit abilities, better threat cycles with overlapping cooldowns, more threat on non-undead/demon types and better itemization characteristics that share both mitigation and threat - and in the beta they've gotten most of that.
Ah well.
Would people be interested in seeing a patch 3.0 Paladin tanking tree? I don't want to do one for WotLK, but a TBC one seems like it might be worthwhile.
Posts
4 comments:
I'd be interested in a prospective paladin tanking build. I've been ret and I've been holy, and I'm not sure I want to go with either for leveling in the XPAC.
Well thats just your opinion man!
Seriously though, there's so much discussion about what a class can/cannot do well, I dont think you can definitely state what a warrior niche was or is. I do know for sure that druids hardly ever tank Illidan and that sucks!
You neglect a players skill in this discussion also; a discussion of class mechanics is only utterly valid when every player is playing at an outstanding skill level. Which is hardly ever the case...
Personally, I think Blizzard have some solid plans about tanks in Wrath, and I'm very excited about it.
Hey, Anon -
Seriously though, there's so much discussion about what a class can/cannot do well, I dont think you can definitely state what a warrior niche was or is. I do know for sure that druids hardly ever tank Illidan and that sucks!
I can definitely state that raids didn't bring warriors because they could be uncrushable - because warriors weren't totally uncrushable, especially against fast-hitting mobs. If your raid differs, that's fine - but keep in mind you should have recruited a paladin instead. And it does suck that Illidan and Kael aren't tankable by druids without some major intervene help, but unless the devs give druids the ability to use a shield (Kael) or block (Illidan) that's not going to change any time soon. And honestly? I'm okay with that. I don't mind that a druid can't do phase 2 of RoS any more that I mind that a druid can't tank Krosh or Zerevor. They're gimmick fights. They don't speak to what a druid can and can't tank because they're so disadvantaged; they rely on a specific ability or set of abilities. And as long as those are the exception rather than the rule, I'm fine with it. That doesn't tell me that druids aren't viable tanks.
And right now, in live, Druids are as viable a tank as any tanking class.
You neglect a players skill in this discussion also; a discussion of class mechanics is only utterly valid when every player is playing at an outstanding skill level. Which is hardly ever the case...
I do because it's irrelevant. A good tank will be a good tank regardless of what tanking class they play. And a bad one will still be a bad one. It doesn't matter if you're an awesome player if you're playing a gimped class; you might be able to do vaguely well some of the time, but mostly you'll be wishing you rolled something else and could completely own.
I'm glad you're excited about the changes to tanks. That's good, and I'm sure there are plenty of people out there similarly excited. For me, I see a lot of the problems that currently exist for feral druids being exacerbated by the changes, and that bothers me a lot.
Thanks for your comments Kalon, and fair enough. I think we're on the same page about a lot of this, even if its hard to communicate on blog comments :)
Well, Blizz did say they're going to remove gimmick fights, and that tanking success will be based upon being a skilled player, with some good gear and teammates to back you up. MT druid, offtank Pally? No problem in Wrath - at least that is the plan. That all seems very reasonable. Sometimes people are paranoid and treat Blizzard as if they're a tax revenue body - tring to screw us every step of the way.
To be totally frank about my experience of raiding though; it has much more to do with 25 people doing the right thing at the right time (and learning the new content) than it does with the details of my stength vs agi, armor, dodge etc. I could boost up certain stats for certain bosses, for example, but I doubt we'd kill the new boss any quicker. When a new boss comes together, it usually does perfectly; it was never because we switched tanks around in a big way, or some tank re-geared himself. That must be most people's experience.
I agree we're viable tanks now too. Outside of the gimmick content, I tank pretty much everything as well as our warriors & pallies. The biggest differences I see are about skill & familiarity with the content, not class mechanics.
Post a Comment