Ghostcrawler on AoE tanking: "The paladin method...is probably too good"
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 25th 2010 at 1:00PM
The discussion about Devastate (that it's an easy ability to adjust) is fair enough but ignores the even easier solution of simply reducing the defensive stance penalty. To be honest I'd like to hear why there's still a penalty there when abilities like Righteous Fury and Frost Presence suffer none. I find the idea that buffing defensive stance would cause big problems for PvP balance kind of absurd. Battle stance grants 15% ArP and Zerker grants 3% crit, at most people would pop into d stance when focused, like they do now anyway. But we're likely to see buffs to Devastate, so just get used to it. My suggestion? While we're buffing Devastate, also have it queue Heroic Strike for us so that's one less button to spam and I can retire my macro.
The discussion really gets interesting when it moves to the subject of AoE threat and damage. "Long-term, the paladin manner of generating AE damage and threat is probably too good, especially given how simple it is. To be honest, we have very mixed feelings on the whole AE tanking game. We brought the druid and warrior more in line with the paladin for fear of recreating the Shattered Halls / Mount Hyjal experience, where other tanks just weren't competitive. What that has led to of course is the AE tank + AE style of damage for almost every pull."
Frankly, as much as I hate to admit it, he's right. Other tanks look at how paladins tank and want to break off a piece of that action because it is so effortless, and that's not what tanking should be about. DPS players have been spoiled by not having to watch their threat on AoE pulls and just dumping DPS onto targets because they can, especially with a paladin tank. And it's also created an idea of unrealistic tank DPS because of how hyper-inflated this kind of AoE tanking is in terms of the damage it deals to all surrounding mobs. Warriors shouldn't be asking for AoE to be increased to that level. frankly, and this statement seems to indicate that no one will really be there much longer.
"You need the tools to be able to tank legitimate adds fights (imagine lots of incoming mobs), but does that mean every pull needs to devolve into that? We'd like to see less AE overall, so buffing everyone's AE tools isn't going to be tops on our agenda. That does however mean that we really can't afford to have a "best AE tank", and while things are more fair there than they were in BC, they aren't fair enough."
It's hard to tell what the fallout of that will be. Will everyone be brought up to the paladin method, or will paladins be reduced? What about death knights, who boast some very powerful AoE tanking tools but need to ramp up by using Pestilence to spread diseases as well as dropping Death and Decay? Where does that fall on the scale? Will druids and warriors see any additional AoE utility for parity's sake or should we just expect nerfs to others? And how will DPS players react if they suddenly have to watch their threat? Will trash pulls change to emphasize or de-emphasize this notion of preventing 'every pull needing to devolve' into a spamming burn-fest? No way to know at this point. I personally hate nerfs and would rather see all tanks buffed, but I don't really see that happening when the statement seems to indicate a general desire to get away from AoE madness.
Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Death Knight, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
Bith Jan 25th 2010 1:04PM
First thought is "duh". Second thought is "lolpallies".
But seriously, for lack of a content-filled comment, damn those pallies.
Elmouth Jan 25th 2010 1:33PM
"It's hard to tell what the fallout of that will be. Will everyone be brought up to the paladin method, or will paladins be reduced?"
Just going by experience with blizz, its obviously gonna be a nerf. They'd rather hurt one class than make the rest happier.
Bith Jan 25th 2010 1:46PM
I'm a prot pally MT for our ICC10man that has all available wings down.
That said, I'm pidgeon-holed into OT and add tank more or less the whole time since our other tank is a warrior.
I'd like to tank the boss sometimes on add fights.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Jan 25th 2010 1:49PM
When things are "too good" they become "nerfed to the ground". Had to say that.
But I've played both a warrior and a paladin and honestly they both work as intended in my opinion even though prot warriors have a lot of nice nifty ways to interrupts. But then again, I've learned to play the weaknesses and strengths of the classes I play.
Goats Jan 25th 2010 1:58PM
"effortless tanking" is the answer... TO be fair its not effortless if you compare it to say any dps class. Tanking is far more complex and is likely the reason we see a lack of tanks.
(cutaia) Jan 25th 2010 2:11PM
"But I've played both a warrior and a paladin and honestly they both work as intended in my opinion even though prot warriors have a lot of nice nifty ways to interrupts. But then again, I've learned to play the weaknesses and strengths of the classes I play."
This is a great point D.O.T.
I would hate to see them completely homoginize all tanks. If changes are neccesary, the smaller they can make the nerfs and buffs, the better.
However, in the future I'd love to see the problem approached through diversification of the fights so that there will be benefits and drawbacks to both styles of tanking. This would be a great way to handle it going forward in Cataclysm, but probably requires too much work to change before then.
Thundrcrackr Jan 25th 2010 2:59PM
@ Goats
I totally agree and was thinking the same thing. Making tanking "easier" should be the last thing they are worried about. Tanking could be A LOT easier and it still wouldn't be as easy as DPS or even healing. They've got a lot of wiggle room in the "easier" department they could be taking advantage of when trying to balance tanking classes - not to mention that it would help our current tanking shortage as well.
Para Jan 25th 2010 4:03PM
What did blizzard expect? They made encounters/trash hit for so little people realized "oh wait we dont need to cc these lets just pull them all" and so they did and pallys came out top, everyone else wanted more aoe tanking abilities, which they got and now its in the state it is.
At first i didnt like it, i missed the days where we used cc (being a mage i find nobody calls out for sheeps anymore) but i also remember wiping in groups when i wasnt the mage doing the cc simply because theres always that person who cant cc what they are told to, and thats DAMN more annoying than being able to aoe everything.
With the new lfg ive been tanking as a druid and warrior, and i have noticed how much harder it is to keep agro off dps that just simply dont care about their threat and go full nuke as soon as i even touch the mobs, but unlike in bc dps dont die from one touch of an elite anymore, so bad dps continue to live and yell "NOOB TANK" whenever they pull agro nomatter what the tank does.
Imo buff all tanks aoe threat (appart from pallies as they obviously dont need it) its the lesser of two evils as it does spawn dps that dont understand agro, but it would create much smoother and faster runs, especially gearing up alts in the dungeon finder.
Cor Jan 25th 2010 5:24PM
Increase tank AE threat and make their lives easier while continueing to encourage lazy play styles? As a tank this is a hard question for me to answer. On one hand making my life easier would be nice and maybe encourage more people to tank.
On the other do we want a game that encourages the lowest form of skill from the DPS?
Maybe in the next expansion they should add a stacking debuff that makes it so if you tank more then 2 or 3 mobs they just start tearing the tank apart.
Keveline Jan 25th 2010 5:30PM
@cutaia
Good points all. I'm a Pally tank, have never tried a warrior, but if Paladins have it too easy with their AE threat generation and we make them more like Warriors, why bother having a Paladin class at all? Seems like all class balance issues could be solved by doing away with the existing classes and having just 3: Tank, DPS, Heal, with no differences in abilities between them. Boooring. But balanced.
Diversified encounters is a much better idea. Then you could have encounters where, "yeah, you can tank it with a Paladin, but the pally is better off switching to DPS spec...let the warrior, druid, DK take this one."
That would be a lot of work for Blizz, but seems like it should eliminate a lot of whining.
BigBadGooz Jan 25th 2010 7:29PM
both of my 10 mans tanks are paladins.....guess why. paladin tanks just have more for a raid than warriors cause hey look so far ahead of threat its healing itself.
vazhkatsi Jan 26th 2010 12:15AM
a lot of pallies have it so easy, that they're bad at aoe threat, they don't have to work at it, and then they run into issues. as a warrior i've tanked and pulled aoe off pallies, i put out way more aoe than most pallies
Naku Jan 26th 2010 10:53AM
yup! nerf them to the ground! i bet some of the Blizz corp head's children are playing paladin so they must have an easy-to-play and wtfpwnfaceroll class. /grat
danrspen Jan 29th 2010 6:18AM
"Tanking could be A LOT easier and it still wouldn't be as easy as DPS or even healing. They've got a lot of wiggle room in the "easier" department they could be taking advantage of when trying to balance tanking classes - not to mention that it would help our current tanking shortage as well."
I stopped tanking because I found it too boring. Lots of fights you can just stand there pull of an okish rotation and you'll be fine (I've tanked on a Druid, DK and Warrior). I absolutely love tanking HCs on my Warrior with a good healer when I can chain pull the place and have to work to keep aggro. I hate tanking bosses where I just stand there and taunt every 30 seconds. If I had DPS riding right on my threat forcing me to ensure I was pulling a perfect rotation it'd be much more interesting. I also hate tanking on my Druid and DK. Druid is the 1 button king and the DK has no options if things go south, you lay down your AoE rotation and pray it holds because after that things are out of your hands.
I'm finding DPS much more challenging than I ever did tanking (although I do play a Feral Druid, I can't bring myself to play my Rogue, 2 button rotation is too boring).
I've not healed anything since MC, but IMHO it's harder than tanking is right now for most fights (HCs don't count).
It's a shame that in a lot of ways tanking raids is easier than tanking HCs.
Impyluvcharm Jan 25th 2010 1:10PM
very interesting article, being a beta 04' player/warrior tank myself,
ive seen so many lack of promising changes to warriors over the years
with regards to our inability of being able to dps near or close too what
pally's bring, the joke for us warriors, if were on the bottom scale of dps,
thats a good thing.
And now with DK's basically out-performing prot warriors in the tank/dps
area, we are once again left behind, i do agree with GC that Pally tanking does
seem a little effortless, from all the people i know who are paladin tanks,
they always say "its so easy, almost too easy". Maybe all tanks should be
nerfed on their dps abilities and we rely more on the other raid/group members
to pick up their roles even more so for that, but then it just starts another
great debate.
either way, good article.
Carr0t Jan 25th 2010 2:29PM
I love my Paladin tank, I really do, but sometimes I do feel like it's too easy. OK, I overgear 5 mans now, but even when I didn't Consecrate and HotR made sure I never lost threat on groups no matter whether someone in similar gear was going all-out single DPS on a target that wasn't mine, or just AoEing < 5 secs after i'd run in and started to build threat. I really enjoy tanking raid bosses, but that's because there's so much more to think about there, with the positioning and avoiding evil stuff on the floor and in the sky and possibly adds to pick up and the like, rather than just tank'n'spank.
IMO consec + HotR should be enough to keep the mobs uninterested in your healer, and nothing more. And even then if someone (the tank, the DPS, the healer, it doesn't matter) is being a tard and standing in the evil stuff on the floor so they have to be chain healed the healer should pull aggro. DPS should have to single target the tank's target, not be able to go all out straight off the bat, and *maybe* could change to AoEing after 10-15 secs or so if mobs are still alive. While we're at it, let's bring back the need to CC at least 1 mob of a pull sometimes. Pretty much every DPS class has got a CC now, and it was much more fun when they had to use 'em. Aah, sheep pulls...
Although, for what it's worth I have been having aggro issues lately. Always with hunters for some reason. Not sure what it is, but I i've kept being out-aggroed on 3 of my last 10 or so PuG dungeon runs, and every time it was a hunter.
Mopo Jan 25th 2010 5:27PM
My Warrior, DK, and Pally are all tank/dps (primarly for LFG to queue faster) and by far it is easier to tank with my Pally even in lower ilevel gear.
My Survival Hunter seems to pull agro fairly easily, so I have to make sure I FD or MD often. Even with tanks with high GS 5000+ I still manage to get the Omen warning, so I have to lay off the dps. We are like Warlocks now, but we actually do damage...
jbodar Jan 25th 2010 8:08PM
@Carr0t
"Pretty much" doesn't quite cut it. Warriors and DKs don't have any long-lasting CC and other classes have CC that only works on certain mob types. Without a gimmick of some sort (say a mob that amplifies the other mobs' damage), having to CC just 1 mob could eventually be overcome by gear and class mechanics. Thus, tanks would be separated by their reliance on CC. It only worked in Outland because you needed a LOT of CC which pretty much screwed non-CC DPS, esp. in Magister's Terrace. It's hard to reconcile mandatory CC with BTPNTC, because in a 5-man once you start requiring 2 or more CCed mobs, certain DPS classes become more desirable than the others.
Is spamming AoE at trash fun? Nah, not really. But its better than being told to respec or roll a different class, because other DPS classes wanted to feel like beautiful and unique snowflakes again.
(cutaia) Jan 25th 2010 1:11PM
As a prot pally, I certainly hope that they don't mess with my AoE goodness, but you won't see me switching characters if they do. I try to just take any nerf or buff as an opportunity to play the game in a bit of a different way.
EderX Jan 26th 2010 12:56PM
"If it's gonna be a tough pull for my pally. I pop my shield wall bubble...50% dmg reduction, concecrate and HotR."
Icebound Fortitude, its not too hard to build up 20 runic power on the pull and pop it. If you are specced frost you can pop Unbreakable armor for a 25% armor boost and 10% str boost (for extra parry).
Warriors can pop shield wall on the pull too.
You just need to know the tools of your class. The only real difference is you may have to wait 2 or 3 seconds to pop it. And if you have a healer who can't keep you up for 2 seconds, even on a rough pull, its time to either stop tanking or get better healers.
Granted, pally tanking has a smaller learning curve than that of a dk or a warrior, but its still difficult to master, like any tanking class. I've seen plenty of horrible tanks and plenty of amazing ones. The spread is pretty even between classes, its all up to the player to know what they are doing.