One of the problems. If needs to scale with all the avoidance and mitigation, not just damage taken. That's it's biggest problem. Of course, when you do that, it's way overpowered. They need to turn it into a threat generation stat, not damage.

If what you're describing means that old content remains interesting (read: something players can't sleepwalk through like current Wrath heroics) because tanks need to do the threat dance then I'm all for it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that a major tank issue back in The Burning Crusade...? You were fine, but the second you outgeared a heroic, for instance, you ended up having to take the gear off so mobs would actually hit and damage you, otherwise your threat generation was gimped.

Hurr. It doesn't scale with damage taken, it scales with tank health ("This bonus can’t exceed 10% of her health."). Later tier tanks have more health (as this is one of the things they focus on with their gear), so they get more AP from vengeance - in effect making stamina a dps/threat stat for the tank.

No one is considering that vengeance is supposed to help you when you're forced to gear for survival when dps gets higher. I think the assumption is that most tanks will start putting threat/dps gear in overgeared heroics, which somewhat alleviates the issue we're talking about. You won't need the extra boost to threat cause you'll be doing it purely by damage.

What I do see being an issue however, is the fact that you'll be taking more damage because you're in threat gear, therefore giving you vengeance dmg that you might not really need if you can hold threat through dps alone anyway. I assume that the decrease in HP (therefore a decrease in the vengeance cap) is supposed to offset this.

It's late so I may be completely misunderstanding the whole process, but that's the way I see it.

scherbaddie:

Saying that Vengeance "scales" with damage taken isn't entirely accurate, but it isn't 100% wrong. The more damage you're taking, the faster Vengeance will stack, so in that sense, it does scale with damage. What scales with your HP is the cap on how much AP you get from the buff.

Really, I'm not happy with the way Vengeance is working right now. At the beginning of a pull, I'm putting out way too little threat; as soon as Vengeance starts stacking, I'm putting out so much that I don't even have to work to stay ahead of the DPS. Mid-fight threat has never been a problem; it's always snap aggro at the beginning of an encounter. And that's exactly what Vengeance does nothing for.

You're misunderstanding the purpose of vengeance. If you read the blog post, it is stated that vengeance is meant to help mid-fight threat, not give you insta-threat on the pull. Keeping that in mind, you seem to be saying that it works too well and needs a nerf.

This is also the reason I say it scales with HP rather than damage taken. It doesn't matter how fast it stacks, as it will always be up within a reasonable time ("shouldn’t need Vengeance in the first six seconds"). What matters is the final AP bonus you will be getting for the sustained portion of the fight (the part of the fight vengeance was designed to help with).

@Wellsee
"older content - like heroics once we outgear them." I think what you might be missing here is that Mobs die so fast once you outgear the 5 mans that you truly only need to hold the mob for 10 seconds or less anyway. As a Warrior Tank I get initial aggro and focus my threat on the melee mobs in the group (since they generally kill DPSers once they grab aggro), if I lose aggro on something long before its going to die then i will just stun the mobs and by the end of the stun they are generally dead. I think it is a very far stretch to think that tanking older content will be hard in any fashion.

@Sluetel
If you are having trouble with initial aggro then your raid buddies are most likely popping all cool downs right off the bat and your rogue or hunter buddies are not starting the fight off with tricks or misdirect as they should be. Or you have some of the highest DPS friends around. If you are talking about 5 man threat on the other hand then the DPS need to wait until you at least get some kind of an attack on the group of mobs, as prox aggro obviously is not going to hold aggro. I am of the sound mind that if at the start of a fight if I see an attack fly past me while I am trying to get to the mobs that person can tank the guy he hits. At that point it is between them and the healer.

@Everyone
This mechanic is fantastic and even if they need to tweak it here and there as we go this mechanic will balance threat issues in the game.

For those concerned about how it will be over powered in PVP you need to think about how it works. The tank must be taking consistant damage for it to stack and not fall off, and I know that when I am taking damage on my tank I die long before Vengeance stacks up to make a difference, if I am not getting heals. If the tank is getting enough Vengeance in PVP to start doing enough damage to cause you problems then you need to go kill the healer allowing this to happen.

Go GC!

The way that tanking talents work now, with baked-in crit reduction, I really think that this is much less of a problem than it used to be. If your tank gear gets so good that you are avoiding too much, then there is no reason why you can't just start swapping out tanking pieces for dps pieces. I tank heroics now in full dps gear (but with a sword n' board), and I have very few rage issues. I also rarely have any threat issues, since I'm usually top dps and top dmg done, and therefore have three times as much threat as anyone else.

So avoidance is only as much of a problem as you wish to make it, unless for some reason you are not collecting any dps gear.

@scherbaddie:

They changed a lot about threat to build it around Vengeance. If threat generation at 0 stacks were the same as it was before Vengeance, we would be completely overpowered once the buff started stacking. Accordingly, we're underpowered early in a pull and overpowered once we start getting thousands of extra AP. I don't think the ability needs a nerf so much as a redesign. Something that starts out with more stacks and then tapers off, for example.

@Surtur:

I'm a hardcore raider; I understand how these mechanics work. We are using MDs and Tricks. My point is that 8k or 9k TPS is very, very low compared to what DPS put out with their normal rotation. Once Vengeance starts stacking, it's not a problem, but early in pulls it can often be a close thing. It's also very noticeable on trash, especially in combination with reduced AOE aggro. And yes, I am up against very good DPS--having formed just this year and raiding only three nights a week, we're top 200 US and looking to push higher in Cata.

So like the rest of the community blog entries its nothing new and hardly worth covering...