Cataclysm tanking changes expanded
by Matthew Rossi 
Oct 29th 2010 at 1:00PM
Zarhym - Re: Upcoming Tanking ChangesHere are a few additional changes we are making which will be applied in patch 4.0.3a:
- Guardian of Ancient Kings -- Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown still 2 minutes (talented). Duration still 12 seconds.
- Icebound Fortitude -- Damage reduction changed from 30% to 20% (or 60% to 50% talented). Cooldown still 2 minutes. Duration still 12 seconds.
- Shield Wall -- Damage reduction changed from 40% to 50%. Cooldown still 2 minutes (talented). Duration still 12 seconds.
- Glyph of Shield Wall -- Now buffs damage reduction by 10% (to 60%), but only adds 1 minute of cooldown.
- Survival Instincts -- Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Duration still 12 seconds.
- Bear Form -- Stamina bonus lowered from 20% to 10% and Heart of the Wild health bonus from 10% to 6%. Bear health should be close to plate tank health with this change.
- Vigilance -- No longer reduces damage by 3%, but will still reset Taunt cooldown and provide Vengeance for the warrior.
In addition to these changes, there was much expounding on the tanking design philosophy, which we will cover after that jump I hear so much about. Being a tank (and thus kind of slow mentally, according to Fox ... man, see if anyone taunts for him in Cataclysm dungeons), I need to go over these things in detail.
First off, these changes (except for the Vigilance one) all seem aimed at standardizing various tanks' "OMFG HE'S CHARGING HIS LAZORS" buttons. Everything lasts about 12 seconds, takes 2 minutes to cool down and cuts incoming damage by 50 percent. The Shield Wall glyph will allow warriors to increase that damage reduction by an additional 10 percent, but it will also increase the cooldown for 1 minute. This basically reduces the damage absorbed for everyone but warriors, who ended up with their baseline 40 percent increased -- but if I were a druid, I would be thrilled with the reduction in the Survival Instincts cooldown. A 10 percent damage reduction lost but being able to use it more than twice as often? Yes, please.
The Vigilance change makes an ability that threatened to become nearly mandatory for using on an off tank in a raid into one you'll still try and use on an off tank -- but he or she won't care, because that damage reduction benefit is gone, gone, gone. I'm starting to wonder if I'll even bother with Vigilance in my tanking build in Cataclysm.
Meanwhile, the Bear Form/Heart of the WIld changes are a pretty hefty nerf. They may be necessary to balance bears against plate tanks, but I can't imagine that any druids out there will be happy with them. Still, if all four tanks end up more or less interchangeable for the content, it means less being forced to sit for "supposedly optimal tanking class of the month," which will ultimately be a good thing. I still don't expect any druid tanks to be happy about it; I know I wouldn't be. Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) talks more about why this was necessary in a later post quoted below.
Finally, GC went on at length about what the tanking design for Cataclysm is and how it differs or departs from Wrath of the Lich King (which I have got to stop misspelling as Wrath of the Licking). Take us away, GC.
Ghostcrawler - Re: Upcoming Tanking ChangesQ u o t e:
I'd like to point out that this hasn't been true for the entire expansion of Wrath of the Lich King.
The faster a cooldown has been available has determined its importance.
See: Heroic Beasts, Anub'arak, TLK, Sarth +3, Vezax, nearly every single tank death fight this whole expansion.
I believe you guys are just flat wrong.
I'd like to point out that this hasn't been true for the entire expansion of Wrath of the Lich King.
The faster a cooldown has been available has determined its importance.
See: Heroic Beasts, Anub'arak, TLK, Sarth +3, Vezax, nearly every single tank death fight this whole expansion.
I believe you guys are just flat wrong.
I agree it worked that way in Lich King. Tanks were often at risk of dying within 2-3 boss hits, often faster than a heal could land. In that environment anything that can prolong your life at all is very valuable, and by extension anything not related to reliably prolonging your life (parry for instance) is not attractive.
This is also something we have set out to change. I understand that you personally don't believe we will change it, and since your vision of what the world will be like is at odds with our vision, it is unsurprising that the changes we make to bring about our vision might not make sense to you.
But if healer mana doesn't matter, our whole combat design collapses. Healers won't value cheap heals. Since mana won't constrain them, overhealing will be common, so they may start devaluing crit as well. DPS specs won't value talents that help them stay alive. And the only way to challenge raids will once again be to clobber tanks so hard that any missed heals will result in tank death. It doesn't have to be this way, and in fact it wasn't this way for much of the game. We were watching the new Nefarian fights and recalling the old Nefarian fights where, in the absence of a berserk timer, the fight could really last for a long time -- maybe 20 minutes or more -- if you had a lot of deaths. The tank wasn't in much danger of RNG dying, so as long as the healers didn't run out of mana, the raid could keep the fight going nearly indefinitely.
As we said above, in the beta raid tests, druids were easy to keep alive and the other tanks were dying in two hits. That wasn't the design we were going for, so we brought the druid down to the other tank levels and adjusted the damage accordingly.
So basically, all the changes so far are aimed at helping move us toward a design that does not rely on Mimiron-style, massive damage that forces your tanks and healers to get absolutely everything right, or watch as tanks die, then the raid dies. While as a tank, I've grown used to this kind of design (à la Soul Reaper), I can't say I'll miss it very much. And I do look forward to heroics that are slightly less grueling to tank and raid groups that care less what class you tank with than whether or not you know how to generate threat and help your healers keep you alive.
We will see how it all ultimately shakes out, of course. If the changes to Bear Form and Heart of the WIld end up balancing tank health and the cooldown changes make their survivability more even, we could be entering a pretty positive phase for tanking. At any rate, we're probably entering the phase of tanking where no one taunts off of Fox until he apologizes, which should be fun for us all.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Death Knight, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
Samurai Bovine Oct 29th 2010 2:47PM
I've played multiple tank classes and to be honest I've always enjoyed it. I've recently thought about picking up bear druids for tanking but the way it seems right now is that the only thing keeping a bear standing is his massive Health. I understand that they want to bring the health pools more inline with everyone else thats tanking but are they also going to give the bears more damage mitigation or something with a little more armor?
Tim {the other Tim} Oct 29th 2010 1:29PM
Before 4.0.1 you put Vigilance on the highest threat dps, i.e. Fury Warrior, for the threat reduction.
Currently there is no threat reduction, instead there is a damage reduction which makes it valuable to put on the "other tank" since he will be getting hit alot.
The change would take out the damage reduction portion but I assume increase our threat through Vengeance. Plus, gaining that spam taunt capability.
Main tank or off tank, it doesn't really matter. Some sort of damage should be getting to the OT.
Oh, that and Warriors are always the MT.
Tim {the other Tim} Oct 29th 2010 1:50PM
This was supposed to be a reply to GerardthePriest, it wasn't a wow insider reply fail- I just forgot to hit the button. Now I just sound like that weird guy at the party that doesn't know how to start a conversation with people to he just talks to a general direction of a group of people hoping someone will start talking to him. (Spoiler: they never do)
GerardthePriest Oct 29th 2010 2:02PM
Thanks for the reply!
I guess you're right that the only person it makes sense to place this on now, with no damage reduction and no threat transfer, is the other tank (main or off). There are a few fights out there (just a few, though, yay Blizz) where offtanks spend a good chunk of their time effectively waiting around, so I do still feel like it's going to be better for off to put on main... but the point of Rossi (and Altair, who commented above) is well taken that at this point it may not even be worth a talent point since it's bringing little or no real utility to most fights.
bui Oct 29th 2010 1:30PM
Druids wanna be the best at everything, you know how annoying that is ? I mean for crying out loud druids can do all 4 roles in the game so if you don't like what they did to bear tanks then be something else until they fix it to your liking.
Snuzzle Oct 29th 2010 2:35PM
I wanna be the very best....
Saeadame Oct 29th 2010 2:57PM
Like no one ever waaaass
Snuzzle Oct 29th 2010 4:54PM
To shift forms is my real quest...
Texicles Oct 30th 2010 2:20PM
Keep it goin' Snuuuuuuzzzz!
Hal Oct 29th 2010 1:31PM
Wrath of the Lickitung?
Josin Oct 29th 2010 1:32PM
I suspect I'll probably have two tanking specs in Cata. One for trash pulls and tank swap fights, which will include Vigilance, and one for single-target tanking that does not.
We'll see though. Still trying to find a nice balance in threat vs. survival talents. Dropped Thunderstruck, and haven't noticed any real loss thus far.
Blackhaven Oct 29th 2010 1:49PM
My girlfriend always made fun of me for replying to pugs that my specs were Prot/Prot.
Actually I'm lying I don't have a girlfriend, who needs a GF when you have an instant queue dungeon anyway.
Josin Oct 29th 2010 1:52PM
My wife just gives me a blank look when I talk to her about specs. The closest she gets to any real gaming is playing Lego Harry Potter.
Hollow Leviathan Oct 29th 2010 4:30PM
The closest my GF gets to gaming is topping the dps meters in the raids I MT! No, but seriously, gamer chicks rock.
Zhaffa Oct 31st 2010 1:54PM
Same here man, my gf is usually topping dps charts in all the raids i tank (she's an arcane/fire mage). Makes me proud, you know? And when i roll a dps toon, she STILL tops me in dps, even at low levels. Go figure -- maybe i was just meant to tank
Rob Oct 29th 2010 1:34PM
I have to agree with the people who are saying that this sort of homogenization isn't all that fun. For the last two years we've been homogenizing classes more and more. I guess the devs are finally saying 'this is too much, too hard to balance'. I do think its great that classes other than warriors can tank, and classes other than priests can heal. But...idk, part of me is saddened by 'every tank has a shield wall which is nearly identical', just like 'every healer will have a big heal, a medium heal, and a small heal' philosophy. We'll have to wait and see how it turns out of course. I think this just reinforces my belief that bears are going to be more marginalized than ever, and rolling a real tank class may be a fun thing to do.
I won't say the sky is falling, it isn't, but I don't like game optimization that center around the hardest tier of content available at the moment, and then a few months later the same thing happens.
Alchemistmerlin Oct 29th 2010 1:59PM
Why does it bother you?
I guess if you play every class, or every class for a specific role, it would bother you due to loss of variety, but if not then why do you care what abilities the other classes in that role use to do their job?
Does the ability not being unique to your class somehow make it less fun? I don't really see how, because if it's unique or not it still does the same thing and requires you to stand in place and push a button over and over again. The essence of the ability is not changed.
zinckiwi Oct 29th 2010 2:17PM
For me, it isn't the "ability not being unique to your class" that isn't as fun, but the opposite: particularly for the healers, their repertoires have been homogenized, so the distinction in "feel" between them has been lessened.
I retired my resto druid as of 4.0.1 because I've always loved the HoT healing approach, and that was greatly diminished with the move to the new core arsenal of "fast/efficient/big" direct heals. If memory serves, in EQ2 there was the "regular" healer, then a HoT-centric healer (druid), reactive healer (shaman), and... something else, or was the shield-type mechanic part of the "regular" healer?
Anyway, three different approaches that *felt* like different approaches. It feels now like the disc priest is the only markedly different playstyle to the rest of the healing class/spec combos.
Snuzzle Oct 29th 2010 2:37PM
I play a prot warrior, prot paladin, and bear druid.
The loss of variety does in fact bother me. Why did I bother levelling three tanking classes if they're just going to be homogenized?
I also play a holy paladin, disc priest, resto shaman, and resto druid. Cataclysm has taken a lot of my variety away from me ;P
Kaphik Oct 29th 2010 2:40PM
It's all about the flavor of the ability. Being able to do the same things as other classes is fine, because we're doing it differently.
It's like driving around the Nürburgring with your choice of supercar.