Forum post of the day: A crushing blow to Warriors?
by Amanda Dean 
Jul 11th 2008 at 3:00AM
Due to itemization and abilities, Warrior and Paladin tanks currently have a greater ability to avoid Crushing Blows than Druid tanks. In the near future, this may become a moot point. Khurg of Spirestone, a Tauren Warrior, worries that Warrior tanks may become somewhat obsolete with the removal of Crushing Blows from boss mobs and a potential thirty second cool down on Shield Block. He asked "What will be the purpose of defense in WotLK ?" The following response from Rawglrlrgll of Lothar was that the defense statistic prevents critical strikes and still buffs the chance for avoidance.
A discussion ensued about the role of tanks in Wrath of the Lich King. Fungus of Altar of Storms responded that each of the four tanking classes in Wrath will have separate foci. Warriors will be mitigation tanks that rely on evasion at the armor cap. Paladins will have less armor than Warriors, but will continue to AoE tank. Death Knights are slated to rely on resistances for tanking. Druids will become less viable as main tanks, but will still serve as off tanks. This is seen by many Druids as getting "the shaft."
Some suggested taking a passive approach until Wrath is released, but others feel that if they don't speak out now, changes won't come until months after the expansion. From what we've seen of Wrath so far, do you think the face of tanking is about to be changed forever?
Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Raiding, Death Knight, Forum Post of the Day
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Ravenblight Jul 11th 2008 3:10AM
I think tanking will be drastically changed..
People definitely should be giving feedback before the xpac comes out.
We will have to wait and see what happens with WotLK but i am very sure that a lot of people arent going to be happy.
I really think all 4 tanks should be equally viable on bosses but also each have something they are better at then everyone else.
I really dont look forward to the introduction Death Knights for this reason.
Anyway i will have to wait and see how it all comes together before i pass any type of judgement.
bob Jul 11th 2008 12:57PM
I would like to point out that paladin tanks do not rely on defense to be uncrushable. defense does help to our total avoidance but really we only need it to be uncritable. So we are forced to stack enormous amounts of dodge, block, and parry. Our talent tree does not give us the ability to be both uncritable and uncrushable so we become gear reliant.
Ravenblight Jul 11th 2008 2:31PM
I know this... not sure what this has to do with this comment though
Paladins who are main tanking have alot to pay attention to, and are the most gear dependent of the 3.
When you start getting new gear (raid gear) as a Paladin tank (at least in my experiences) you want to make sure that you meet all the requirements still and find yourself constantly juggling around all the stats to keep them balanced out.
102.4 total avoidance (dodge/shield block/parry)w/holyshield
490 def
Spell dmg
Hp
etc
Kal Jul 11th 2008 3:05PM
Paladins might not need defense to become uncrushable, but it is the second best stat (next to block rating) to stack in order to become uncrushable. It's much better than dodge or parry in terms of getting there quickly.
Warriors would almost always rather stack dodge than defense (though dodge and defense are very close on their given avoidance) but paladins almost always would rather stack defense over dodge.
Ravenblight Jul 11th 2008 3:29PM
@ Kal
That would be (i am sorry for stating the obvious but you left it out) also be because a big part of Paladins threat is generated from being hit. Though yes Defense and Shield Block are the 2 easiest stats for Paladins to reach being uncrushable
Warriors also tend to hit 490/491 def (491 for safe measure)then stack stamina as their uncrushability has to do with Shield block. At least most of the warrior tanks i know do that
darkra Jul 11th 2008 3:26AM
I'd like to voice my concern about warrior tanking viability in high end raiding.
I can't deny Burning Crusade gave us warrior tanks a lot of goodies: decreased magic damage taken, thunderclap in defensive stance and most of all a damaging ability to spam. All great stuff.
But it also had two major drawbacks:
1. Warrior tanks were all forced into a very strict and inflexible spec, with devastate being such an absolute must. Gone are the days of the hybrid fury/prot main tanks.
2. We got a lot. But others got more. And I talk of course for our furry friends, the Druids. Been secondrate offtanks at best for raids preBC, they now are equal to a warrior in every respect. Some would say, they are way better. They get more or less the same damage, they can create threat more consistently since they don't get as rage starved as warriors as their gear increases, and they got the bonus of been able to shift to a dpser when he doesn't need to tank and of course to combat res...
The only real advantage warrior tanks have are our many "oh shit" buttons, but seeing the so far leaked WotLK skills and talents my concerns only increase.
Druids get magic damage reduction, a thunderclap for casters AND a Last Stand combined with Bestial Wrath... We get some help to combat our rage starvation and an improved thunderclap combined with a Tauren stomp... which is great for 5mans, but what about maintanking?
Already the whole BT and Sunwell requires only 1 protection warrior, and that's just for bosses that require shield block/reflect... I'm afraid thst unless something changes WotLK might really signify the end of warrior tanks in endgame raiding, as they'll feel more and more like dead weight.
Wild Jul 11th 2008 7:55AM
"We got a lot. But others got more. And I talk of course for our furry friends, the Druids. Been secondrate offtanks at best for raids preBC, they now are equal to a warrior in every respect. Some would say, they are way better. They get more or less the same damage, they can create threat more consistently since they don't get as rage starved as warriors as their gear increase"
A well geared feral druid is running around with 35K armor, 60% dodge at least if you don't downgrade to your stam set you will be rage starved when tanking 5 mans and heroics.
As for warriors getting "the shaft" when every freaking boss stops dropping plate and goodies for warrior you can talk. When you face dead end itemization then you can talk. When warriors have the worst scaling in the game then they can talk. I love how you guys always talk as if you got the shaft when Blizzard bends over backwards to make sure you are catered for.
I have the most DKP in my guild and I have nothing to spend it on. Warriors are the spoiled children of tanking.
Squishy Jul 11th 2008 8:28AM
> 2. We got a lot. But others got more. And I talk of course for our furry friends, the Druids.
BS. Show me purple leather armor with defense.
> a thunderclap for casters
BS. I have no thunderclap. I've got a crappy bash on a 60-second cooldown.
Your Shield Bash? 12 seconds.
Ryan Jul 11th 2008 10:43AM
Druids get no thunderclap or magic damage reduction. There was a damage reduction talent early in Alpha, but that was subsequently removed. Are you referring to the 'infected wounds' talent, which is kind of a disease based crippling/wound poison effect? That only slows attack and movement speed, and it seems like this is primarily a PVP talent, and I would assume boss mobs would be immune.
darkra Jul 11th 2008 11:08AM
--
A well geared feral druid is running around with 35K armor, 60% dodge at least if you don't downgrade to your stam set you will be rage starved when tanking 5 mans and heroics.
--
What you describe is overgearing the encounter. In that case of course, everyone would get rage starved. And honestly, I don't care about 5mans, I;m talking endgame. I'm talking Felmyst, with a 2.5 attack speed, where a dodge or parry leaves me with no rage for 5 seconds, as my whites cannot be counted as rage generation, while a druid's can almost cover him on their own.
--
As for warriors getting "the shaft" when every freaking boss stops dropping plate and goodies for warrior you can talk. When you face dead end itemization then you can talk. When warriors have the worst scaling in the game then they can talk. I love how you guys always talk as if you got the shaft when Blizzard bends over backwards to make sure you are catered for.
--
Itemization for druids is much better than it was pre-BC. And sorry that my class is item dependand while yours relies on the utility your forms give you. More gear drops for warriors cause warriors NEED gear to compete with other classes.
--
> a thunderclap for casters
BS. I have no thunderclap. I've got a crappy bash on a 60-second cooldown.
Your Shield Bash? 12 seconds.
--
Check the new talents, it's called Infected Wounds.
Anyway, I think you miss the point... you talk about gear while I talk about utility. I don't know if you raided preBC, but druids that tried to tank were laughting stock, you gained a lot of ground, and have become better than warriors in many an encounter... and I'll give you a quick example:
Illidan. I'm maintanking and we use a druid and a warrior with FR gear for p2. At p1 the druid is at cat for and dpses. At p2 he pops to bear, and tanks one of the adds, taking only slightly more damage than the warrior tank, and creating roughly the same threat. On p3 and onward, he truns again into a cat and dpses, of course combatressing someone if the proverbial sh!t hit the fan. At the end, he has 3 times more dps than the warrior FR tank.
And I wonder... what raid leader wouldn't take 2 druids as FR tanks on Illidan?
This is just one of the many examples I can give you on endgame.
Also note, Blizzard is not unaware of that. They purposely add abilities that require a shield (deaden at RoS, shear on Illidan etc) to force a place for protection warriors in raids.
h8rain Jul 11th 2008 11:50AM
To Squishy:
Quick search on wowhead.com
4 leather items with +def (all blue)
259 plate items with +def (153 epic)
To Wild:
I am in the same boat when I comes to DKP. At any given time, I either have the most or second most by a point or two.
Heilig Jul 11th 2008 1:10PM
"And I wonder... what raid leader wouldn't take 2 druids as FR tanks on Illidan?
This is just one of the many examples I can give you on endgame."
You're missing the point dude. Yeah, it's a better decision to have druids flame tank. And most druid tanks would give upp ALL their DPS potential just to be ABLE to actually tank Illidan instead of his pets. Warriors, Pallies, and Druids can all flame tank. Druids CAN NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES tank Illidan due to shear. Stop complaining.
Oh, you only need one prot warrior for Sunwell? Go talk to Ret Pallies about only needing one person from your spec in a raid. It's not like you're the only warrior, you're just the only prot. What's your raid makeup? 1 prot warrior, 1 prot pally, 2-3 bears? I bet there's also 1 ret pally, 1 Survival hunter, 1 MM hunter, 1 shadow priest, 1 moonkin, etc. You're not alone.
You need to think about your situation. You're the MT. Period. You get to be the guy standing there smacking the big bosses and laughing. You get first call on all the gear that drops. You are REQUIRED for almost every boss in endgame raids while the rest of us are niche players. Your complaint is simply that you STILL don't get ENOUGH. This isn't old world anymore pal, other tanks are here and ready to fight for a spot. You still have the best tanking abilities in the game, but you want us to NOT be able to compete with you. You are already the king and you just don't want to have to work to keep the spot.
Then again, from the way your post is written, it seems that your problem is that you personally AREN'T the MT, some other better prot warrior is, and you're bitter because the prot pallies and Druids are keeping you from getting into the raid. Sorry about that, but that ain't my fault. Go work harder or find a new guild where you CAN be the MT.
Savant Jul 11th 2008 2:00PM
I agree 100%. This isn't about QQ, it's about reality. Protection warriors just don't offer anything but the ability to tank ONE target. They can't DPS, they certainly can't heal, they offer no buffs or debuffs (that can't be applied by a DPS warrior) and in an instance where you need all classes to be flexible, a protection warrior just doesn't pull his weight.
With the expansion we are getting ANOTHER tanking class, and people need to ask themselves, when was the last time you took 4 tanks on a RAID? With 4 classes that can spec as tank, you're not going to have room to take one from each class with you to be 'fair'.
You'll have to make choices based on which classes can do the most when NOT tanking, or provide the greatest variety of tanking abilities. Druids, with their superior talent trees can spec feral/combat and go DPS with a gear switch. So that leaves the paladin, death knight and warrrior. The death knight is the new 'magic boss' tank since there will be no new resist gear sets. The paladin is the only effective AOE tank. This leaves the prot warrior without much of a job.
Will prot warriors be tanking in the expansion? Of course. However, it will only be in guilds where the prot warrior is the guild master and/or in guilds where the prot warrior has been around so long that it would cause drama to ask them to step aside.
In new guilds you will see prot warriors have a greatly reduced role, and I expect to see a lot of out of work prot warriors in the future.
Let's just say I have parked by prot warrior and an rolling death knight the first chance I get. I can see the writing on the wall.
dan Jul 13th 2008 4:18AM
Savant... where on earth did you read this?
"since there will be no new resist gear sets. "
therationalpi Jul 11th 2008 3:29AM
It's a tough call, all around. When you consider it, tank is a special role in the game. It is the only role where you can't stack more of them to make the job easier. If you need more healing, you can bring more healers, if you need more damage, your can bring more DPS. You have to trade off between the two to get a good balance, but overall, more = more. For tanks, though, you can't split the damage between two tanks for a given mob. More tanks doesn't make the job any easier.
With that said, Blizzard needs to do two things to do right by all the tanking classes. They need to:
1. Give all of the tanking classes the ability to succesfully clear any and all 5 and 10 man content as the main tank.
2. Offer a diverse enough set of encounters that each tank can be represented at every tier level of 25 mans.
The reason for the first one is clear, there should be no reason for you to have to switch tanks in the middle of those kinds of runs, and with only 5-10 people, you don't have enough slots to spare 4 for specific tanks.
The second one is to ensure that no tank is underrepresented. What is the point of being the best AoE tank, if you don't have any AoE fights to show your stuff on? What is the point of being the best off-tank, if there aren't any fights like Gruul, where that skill comes into play.
As for the argument with druids being shafted. To me, their primary asset has always been the ability to shift in the middle of battle. They can very quickly go from being good DPS to good tanks without a gear change, in the middle of a fight. Other tanks can't do that, and it makes them superior choices for fights where the number of tanks changes over the course of the encounter. It's also a very common mechanic to have adds that need to be tanked, and DPS is arguably the most 'fun' part of the game, so druids get to enjoy both that aspect AND tanking.
Tradyk Jul 11th 2008 8:07AM
I'm going to to agree with most of what the previous posters have said, with the exception of 'Death of Warriors as MT's.' Mate, I don't know what its like on your server, but for any non-warrior to even be considered for MT past Kara, they need to be exceptional. What we're seeing at the moment isn't a removal of warriors as MT's, but Blizzard (hopefully) giving the ability to main tank to someone other then a warrior.
Yes, druids and paladins have MT'd just about every fight, except the last few SW battles, but 99.9% of those weren't on progression. When it comes to progression, where every tank really wants to be, it's warriors or nothing. Because the 'only thing' you have above the other tank classes is the only thing that matters in progression content.
And of course a raid only requires 1 Prot warrior. Only requires 1 Prot paladin, or 1 Main Feral tank aswell. In a 25 man raid, thats already 3 slots for tankers, four slots, once WotLK hits and DK's come in. Considering there's only 2.5 slots for any class in a raid (assuming all things are balanced and ya don't have four warlocks:P), requiring two of any of the tank classes is just unfair to both the other specs of that class, and the other tanking classes.
So yes, we are seeing the end of warriors as *THE* main tanks, and the beginning of them as *A* main tank.
But that's not really what I meant to post about (yay for segways). I'm not sure if it was brought up in that forum topic, but on the wowhead talent calculator for WotLK, the anticipation talent on warriors has been changed from adding 20 Defense, to adding 5% dodge. And I didn't notice any of the DK talents that added defense either (though there was the one that added parry rating as a percentage of strength - woot for dw tankage :P).
Could this be the new trend? Getting rid of the defense stat all together?
Ravenblight Jul 11th 2008 11:35AM
Both of oyu made exceptional posts ;)
Trad i think you understand/ see where the game is going
Zanthu Jul 11th 2008 3:56AM
Dont nerf mai tanks!
Razielwings Jul 11th 2008 4:43AM
This is just an idea so don't flame me I beg.
1. More multi-stage boss fights. Give the warrior a stage he can excell at, then get a threat restart with a new stage where the druid holds his own really well, same again with high magic AOE for the Death Knight to handle.
2. Make bosses "tougher" but introduce a threat transfer mechanic to tanks. Hunters have something similar. But imagine a boss that's so bad, or puts on so many debuffs the tank can't take it, so he passes the threat on to warrior No. 2 in a sort of "No not me! Hit him instead!" Meanwhile the first tank recovers.
The second idea I like more, as it gives the hillarious potential for tanks to get revenge on the idiots in PUGs who annoy them. If that damn hunter keeps taking aggro in pulls, send ALL the mobs his way on the next encounter. Muahaha.
souvlaki Jul 11th 2008 6:32AM
#2 already exists it is called "tell_your_tanking_parter_to_TAUNT_the_mob".