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I completely agree. I went out of my way the last week before xpac to tank heroic Shat Halls and various other challenging heroics without CC because I knew once 3.0 came it would be too easy. What I’ve always loved most about tanking is the challenge and the ability to keep it exciting by going faster and faster, using less and less CC until there was none, and just generally always keeping it interesting and complex enough to be fun. Not to mention, it was the fact that everyone couldn’t do it, let alone do it well, that made tanking so special; some of that is gone now.
I will say, however, that I’ve still been able to have fun with it. The trick is to just pull as many mobs as you can without dying. Before that may have been 6, or 7; now it’s 16 and up, depending on the mobs and how good your healer is. I’ve even stopped bothering to mark. It’s still challenging if you try pulling 16 guys at once in heroic Slabs, for example, or entire sections in heroic MGT (no CC FTW, when it comes to fun that is.) The best upside is that I’m a lot less annoyed with DPS now. I no longer care when DPS doesn’t focus fire. Point being, its still exciting if you’re crazy enough to abandon all the old rules.
The good tanks will always stand out from the rest regardless of the patches. It’s a mindset that makes us stand out; that’s not released with patches and xpacs.
Agreed. Good tanks will always rise to the top because there are other aspects to being a tank than the talents provided. Accepting responsibilty for the raid’s safety is not for everyone and will filter out players that are just DPS oriented. Right now everything is nerfed compared to the new talents, but with the new expansion I expect raids/instances to get “tough” again and when that happens there will be another polarization of the class seperating the men from the boys. Chances are if you visit this site, you will make that cut.
Agree completely. Wait until xpac and 70-80 instances. There’s more to tanking than what’s being discussed here. People who think in DPS will continue to think in DPS. They’ll still shy away from accepting responsibility for the safety of the group. I’ll wager that come 80 and DKs there will still be a tank shortage because it’s a mentality and skill thing that make a good in-demand tank.
I for one can’t wait to find out! Also, I do not mourn stance dancing.
I have to saw I love tanking now in post 3.0 patch, and look forward to the X-pac, but the bar has been lowered a bit in terms of the required skill needed to do it well.
But hell, I am having too much damn fun to care about it too much. Bring on the Raid bosses!
i think threat has been fixed (albeit us being gods until wrath)
But the other two i will miss. My friend who tanked most of BWL for progression whinged about them allowing the use of thunder clap in def stance. Now i am whinging that they put zerker rage in all stances.
Crushing blows spiced up encounters. I am going to miss them too.
Well you can always have the fun of crushing blows by not getting back to 490 defense. Keep some crits in the mix.
Draco reply on October 22, 2008 4:40 pm:
well 490 def is not required to be uncritable anymore is it? Did i miss something somewhere did they increase the crit chance of mobs? I have been concentrating on ability changes not game mechanic changes. I have 5.12% crit reduction in 478 def or there abouts.
Crushing blows gave tanking that edge, especially when you are leading the raid I will miss this, i wouldn’t say threat has gone….mabye threat in terms to pushing alot out with relitively little effort was doing about 1100-1400 which i think is good, though now its nearer to 3000 (i think… omen3 doesn’t display my TPS very well if at all) doubling the top DPS….and I don’t even have full points in cruelty, incite or improved revenge yet..
I will miss stance dancing though (bar the rare time I may need to use intercept) happy memorys of getting knocked flying by blackheart the inciter in heroic SL only to switch stances in mid air and charge back in making you look like a pro….R.I.P *builds monument*
Now you get to spec into Warbringer and be a bad ass AND get rage back! My greatest moments now are in the headless horseman fight, charging him then intervene the person that summoned. You start flying around like superman!
Hmm This is tricky. Warrior tanks had the most DO or DIE approach when it came to performance. If you had troubles, the whole party/raid immediately knew about it, even when it wasn’t always your fault. All the while that rogue could output half the DPS of another and only a meter would be able to pin the shortcomings on him.
Making it simpler for most warriors to hold aggro lets good warriors distinguish themselves with tons of subtle things: Your pulling, your awareness, your damage, your spec/gear choice, your mobility, your timing with Shield Block, Spell Reflect, Shield Bash and all three 5-min cooldowns… all these things and more are still there.
Warriors who thought they reached the epitome of flawless skills because they could hold aggro will be forced to shift their mindset a bit.
The game’s difficulty always remains the same. They have to simplify in order to add complexity. While, we should mourn what use to be some of the skill defining aspects of tanking, we can also expect that on the horizon there are new ways for us to separate ourselves from our fellow tanks.
This is true for other classes. A shadowpriest wearing grays can now generate the same mana for the party as a 8/8 T6 can.
If not for this ridiculously addictive achievement fetish I’m caught up in, I’d be parking all of my toons for quite awhile.
Blizzard puts a lot of money into customer research. Clearly, they found that their best hope in maintaining monthly subscriptions was to lower the bar and to make us all “good”. A sign of the times.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this game. There is always another edge. There is always another way to define yourself as the superior tank. Those that content themselves with believing that we’re all equal inevitably end up inferior.
I’m learning from running heroics (now that we are a good 3 months into wrath) that pugging with a terrible healer can bring out the skills a good tank has. It will make you better aware of your surroundings and it sometimes forces you to come up with interesting fixes to some issues. In Nexus I literally spam Spell Reflect when tanking casters. in UK, Ingvar can cause trouble with his dark smash and his aoe silence. I kinda came up with a strat after the fact which I nickname the metronome strategy (just for my bad memory). tank ingvar close to one pillar near the end of teh platform. when he does his dark smash, i move to one side using ingvar as a pivot point. the casters move the opposite way I do and it is easier to get behind a pillar to LOS his aoe. eh, there might be some bumps to smooth out with it, but it worked.
I’ve paid my dues and have fought tooth and nail (bear-tank). I’m happy with the changes so far. After so many frustrating runs trying to hold agro on 4 plus mobs and doing it I can say that I don’t miss it. I would say take a wait and see stance on what has happened. The real test will be in the level 80 instances. Things are so out of whack right now at the level 70 game that I don’t think you can really judge things yet.
One thing I LOVE now is that I can join aoe groups as a tank and consider myself dps. With swipe hitting unlimited mobs and glyph of maul doubling up smacks it is a lot of fun watching the rain-of-numbers. In those Hyjal groups the warriors are tanking, but instead of going kitty dps I switch to bear.
Very clever picture! With all the changes, though, my guild’s DPS is so trigger happy and they’re opening up before I’ve pulled…with the difficulty so tuned down, people have gotten so sloppy. Not many people die for it, as it is easy to get aggro back, but I’m just a bit surprised at how much discipline has been lost in a week.
I know how you feel. I’m badge geared with some Kara/pvp pieces. I was running a heroic the other night with the two highest dps characters/players in the guild, both of whom outgear me. I was having the hunter pull groups with multishot (a lot of which did crit), and I was easily able to pull threat with a single thunderclap. It just doesn’t seem right. Misdirect….huh?
I do however like that new UI feature that tells you when a mob has charged targets. is losing threat, or has high threat. But, maybe that is just lazy on my part too?
I do LOVE tanking Heroic MGT now. Now I know why Paladins thought it was fun. With the shockwave stun and the dmg that concussion blow does, its easy to keep the Succubi and the healing mobs under control. I love blowing up the wyrm room in a single pull with my AP gear. Good times.
I guess you just have to take the bad with the good.
I can’t agree more. I ran Kara on my mage after the patch, and I was running it like normal, only to realize rather quickly that NONE of the los pulls were making it into range for me to nuke them, ’cause melee was already attacking them where they stood!
I was incredibly surprised. I mean, sure, kara is little more than a race to the top anymore, but before the patch we always executed it with some precision, and now it’s just like grouping for SSO dailies. Everyone’s in the same general area killing whatever they see that isn’t dead yet.
I totally agree bosephus. I see so much discipline being lost after this patch. Dps is so very sloppy not one cares about good solid, precise team work. I think it will be quite hilarious to see the new inexperienced dps and upcoming tanks that take this for granted and do not understand the true complexity of tanking. I think we’ll be seeing many our fellow friends and guildies eat the dirt come exp time. I on the other hand do like to mix it up by pulling as quickly and as many as possible. I still watch a ret pally and how extraordinary their dps is now try and tank off me and on the off chance that I’m taking it easy in a pull they nearly die… i do it on purpose so they don’t forget what they are supposed to be doing.
I’m in love with the changes and if the designers have any hand in the game truly we will not be nerfed because we shouldn’t… i laugh at the pvp babies that think were OP, no your just not used to us being able to stop your face in!!!!
Back to the point of all of this, threat was broken it was stupid we couldn’t do anything but essentially “mythically” making mobs pissed at us by breaking their armor and not them…. How many of you truly think of a warrior in all its glory not as a destruction machine? Warriors kill things its what we do and have always done… now we can show it for real. We have been the most underdeveloped class in the history of this game. We finally got the recognition now we can show everyone what we can do.
I’m more than a bit excited to see what the instances will be like in the expansion. I should read up more on all the new tid bits.
Totally agree. I was in ZA yesterday with a guild I ran with before the patch. The first run was very well done indeed, good times and a solid output with 2 timechests.
Yesterday … it was horrible. On Teamspeak they only were flaming about “stupid achivements”, “wow is for idiots now”, “everythings pointless”, bla bla. No one lead the raid, no targets were marked, no direction given. On the first boss fight they “suddenly realized” that there was only one healer. We didn’t get one time chest.
The bosskills were sloppy, trashpulls were sloppy (DpS running ahead and pulling randomly) and when I said that it might be better if I MT’d bossfights rather than the full-raidbuffed 15k health Pala I got a flame-income on Teamspeak about “how stupid we warriors are that we think only health mattered, we idiots only socketing for +sta and not having an idea that other stats were important”.
Even the other tank, from the same guild, whispered to me and said he was sorry for that.
It was the most horrible organized & executed raid, with the “raid leader” being nothing but disappointed about all the changes and being a complete dick all over.
I’m looking forward to balanced content again, when DPS will be 1- or twoshot in a raid if they can’t turn down their egos. For now … I’ll take it easy. Raiding can wait, especially if all of a sudden everyone thinks they can act like total idiots and excuse everything with “it’s patch-nerfed, don’t whine around and let me have some fun”.
I’ve been wondering, since the need to maximize threat has been minimized and even rage-starvation has been mitigated with the free shield slams and heroic strikes, how is that going to affect the badge order?
I’m a little late to the game, so I’m just now getting enough badges to start buying stuff. It seems though, that the driving factor in a lot of the ordering was hit/expertise for the purpose of building threat or avoidance to mitigate crushing blows. Obviously neither of those factors is eliminated, but perhaps the priority has changed.
Basically though I’m hoping to see a badge pick order for WotLK so that I can make the most informed choices heading into Northrend.
Aside from that, though, I too have been willing to jump into a Heroic with no CC whereas in the past I wasn’t really comfortable without two. There have actually been times where I asked a hunter or other lesser CC (all others are secondary to mages imo) to just not bother, I’ve been having such a blast tanking it all.
We have been having a blast with the new tanking along with the buffing of damage for the raid, simply for the fact that we don’t have enough people in our guild to hit 25 man content. We were able to 15 man Gruul and Mag and we’re finally getting to see some of the higher end raid content.
I will miss stance dancing though. Even though it could be performed easily by a macro, it was a sure sign of a good tank.
As an aside, we just recently went back and did some classic raiding. You can get back at those dps’ers that have lost all that discipline by spinning Onyxia when you’re tanking her. It was a blast!
I’m enjoying the changes. It may be easy at the moment but how will it be at level 80?
Blizz had to do something to get more people to play tanks. I get tells every time I long on asking me to tank this or that from people I don’t even know. Then I get more of the same from guildies. Our guild has over 100 level 70’s and only 5 of those are tanks.
Only the leftmost gravestone gets my flowers…
Rare enough as it was, I enjoyed the stancedances to break fears or to intercept out of knockbacks. The question was never whether you used a macro for it or not, but rather if you were able to do it reliable in that very small time-window, stancedance had to be very precise timing to be effective, now you don’t have to watch timers or cast bars anymore, you just hit zerker rage whenever… if you do get feared for a second, who cares, you can still break it. So yeah, this was a dumbing down.
Threat gets replaced with damage, I sure can live with that. I’m very much enjoying heroics again all of a sudden, not only because I can aoe tank now but because I can finally be as powerful as my gear-level suggests. I can now wear my tier6 tank gear in heroics, I don’t have to gimp my survivability anymore just to produce adequate threat. I’m doing more threat, even respectable damage, yet I need less healing. That’s how it should always have been when you vastly outgear the content you’re tanking.
Crushing blows, anything that can screw you over by means of pure RNG is not a fun mechanic. Even as a diligant shieldblock user you could have that moment where the crushing RNG would just destroy you, fast attacking bosses like Prince or Morogrim were notorious for this when you were doing them at the intended gearlevel.
I didn’t mind the shieldblock spam, it felt like I was actively doing something for my survival rather than just spamming threat moves. However the new shieldblock is so awesome that I won’t miss the old one a bit. It gives me options now what to do with it rather than just spamming it. I can use it as emergency button, I can use it as a threatbooster (or should I say, “damagebooster” hehe)
My summary is: the changes to warriors and tanking are awesome, I think a lot of the QQ about reduced skill atm comes from the massive big nerf to all the raid instances, not from the new class mechanics. That nerf was indeed uncalled for and over the top, but in a month nobody will really care about it anyway, so let’s just look ahead
I think thats why blizzard nerfed the content so it didn’t go the way of MC and BWL when TBC came out. Everyone is rushing to content that they couldn’t have done before and now that blizz seemingly fixed all the classes we are doing it. I got to see hyjal and i never thought i’d be able to before the new expansion. Everyone is running and doing as many instances as possible and it doesn’t take 2-3 hours.
I guess I can see both sides of the coin. I’m not nearly at the level of tanking that alot of you guys were prior to the patch. I had just started tanking Kara about a month prior. My gear was pretty crappy and if I was grouped with gung-ho dps or CC challenged members, it made tanking both stressful & irritating. I’m sure with the current patch coupled with the fact that the current content isn’t really optimized for it, it does make it much easier and forgiving. Heroics I use to dread running I’m now speed pulling in and clearing in like 30mins. That certainly makes it funnier and maybe makes up for those stressful runs where you leave cursing the other people in your group. Honestly at this point at my lvl of progression the biggest challenge is finding healers who can keep up as I pull a whole room.
Although like others have said, I have no doubt Blizzard is aware of this and once the expansion comes out they will make sure tanking becomes more of a challenge again. But for now I’m going to enjoy the fun and gear upgrades that comes along with the patch.
Stance dancing was a lot of fun for me personally.
I know there are a lot of tanks out there who just macrod that all away but Moving though kara all the way to sunwell I always danced out of fears and other things manually. Actually gave me something to do that required a little more coordination than 2344.
I did like having a rotation though. So I could remain 100% focused on the encounter without having to even look at the buttons because I knew what to press and have a pretty good idea of exactly how long 1.5s is.
With the loss of a threat rotation they really had to make it easier to stop good tanks from getting RNG as much.
Devestate. Is anyone else considering not speccing into it? I never use it anymore. Shield slam, concussion blow (even on bosses), revenge, thunderclap and Shockwave. I’m thinking about dropping cruelty as well. I might put down my high dps executioner enchanted Blazefury for something with more mitigation stats like the Sun Eater for every encounter. Am I going overboard?
You’ve gotta spec into Devastate to get Sword and Board. Not to mention, you’ll lose a ton of threat keeping up Sunders with just Sunder rather than Devastate. So yup, overboard
Yep, overboard. Devastate triggers sword and board for free Shield Slams! If I don’t have anything better to hit on a GCD, I’ll hit devastate to possibly proc S&B.
There will always be good and bad tanks, as there is good and bad Warlock. We will just be judged differently - its a shift a paradigm. Now a good tank will be the one doing more DPS than the other one. He will also be the one able to use all the new toys we get effectively. Trust me, some peoples will be overwhelmed by the numbers of new ability and won’t be able to use them properly. Those are the same that were doing 25% less TPS than you with the same gear pre-3.0. I already forsee a bad tank not being able to maximize his Shield Slam during his Shield Block buff.
TSP output its never a judge on who is the better tank IMO.
I have had people spec for highest TSP and get smashed into pulp because they didn’t go for that extra armour/avoidance/health.
There also needs to be taken into consideration, possitioning/spacial awareness, knowledge, choseing the right gear for the fight, or in my case, effectively leading 9-24 other people.
Some of our tanks in my guild always try to out theat me then rub it in my face, on the rare occasion they do I get the “I outtank you HA!” shortly followed by them getting owned by whatever boss they decide to take off me (Why can’t we get the innitial treat burst of pallys :P) . I call that inferiority complex.
Well, I sure don’t miss crushing blows - having to constantly refresh an ability every 3 seconds was, to say the least, annoying as hell. It goes past a question of skill or technique, because after a while it becomes a mechanical move that requires no thinking, no strategy. Shield block is still there though - and it will allow for more interesting uses (timing it to match some specific boss ability, for example).
Stance-dancing was also not fun in my opinion, not because of the ability required, but mostly because the rage loss involved made choices pretty limited after switching stances. They could have merged the reduced rage loss from stance mastery into some other protection talent, making stance-dancing more interesting. But if I had to choose between now and before 3.0, I’d definitely go with now.
Finally, threat… As someone else said, I think threat is temporarily set to easymode, but after the expansion hits and we all hit 80, DPS classes will also be strong enough to make us sweat to keep up…
Exactly, in my server a tank is a rare commodity but now with 3.0 ppl with tanking alts are coming out of nowhere like they were waiting for it to become easier.
DPS and Tanking are no longer mutually exclusive. This is a good thing. I love playing BGs as prot. NOW they put in a DPS meter for honor calculation! DAMN YOUS BLIZZ. What about the tanks that GUARD the tower or flag?
Yup, I know I am mourning the 2 most perverse and rediculous aspects of the game suddenly disapearing. I’m totally sad that blizzard has fixed our retardedly broken threat gen, too. Also, I enjoy pounding in deck nails with my hands, opening bottles with my teeth, and going overseas by rowboat instead of flying. Cuz I’m xxHArdCoRExx.
Vene, you are correct that stance dancing and crushing blow have died, or perhaps just gone into a permenant vegetative state. I think threat on the other hand is just on a leave of absence. Expect WotLK bosses to cleave through the rest of the party like Prince does when the tank dies. If you lose threat or die expect a wipe.
Our role is more that just the threat king. We’re most likely the party and raid leader. We set the pace, we take the damage, we work with the healers and we keep it all together. A good tank will be more than just a toon in heavy armor. It’s a toon played by someone with an ability to manage multiple demands. The tank player is watching mana, mobs, looking out for adds, watching the dpsers and applies extra threat when necessary. Now that we have noticable DPS a good tank will also know when to step up the damage, and when to use trinkets and abilities to delay their own death. These skills are what set good tanks apart from others and they are not dead.
threat was stupid and so were crushing blows. mitigating crushing blows was mindless. threat was gear and hitting the same 4 abilities in sequence. the game is much better when its active.
id say stance dancing still has its place. i would agree that i miss zerker rage to break fears; it felt like a way to separate a mediocre tank from a good tank. i still use stance dancing when i want to use all three of my charges and when i want to use a particular discipline, though. i also stance dance when im dpsing as prot to, for example, throw up spell reflect and protect a nearby ally. we have enough skills and there is enough room to code creative encounters that i wouldnt count stance dancing out yet.
threat and crushing blows were completely idiotic though.
stance dancing was a way to really show off, but the loss of rage kept me from doing it unless totally necessary…
The new warbringer lets me zoom around on casters when i cant los well… i love having the main pack at bay, charging and silencing the caster then back to the rest of the mob… also found that i can also add more dps to the fight…. If i slack on revenge and sword and board my dps drops alot… i think good tanks will now do amazing dps as well as protecting the group…
Plus running lowbies is hysterical now… Pulling whole rooms at a time.. too much fun….
I dont mourn a second. Being a casual player with no RL opportunity to raid for 5 hours 2 times a week, I can suddenly get to see parts of the game that was impossible before. I know most ppl here are hardcore players and ubertanks – big respect to all of you – but for the rest of us this change brings only more fun to the game.
Played this game for 2 years as tank and now finally I have made my first complete Kara run :O
About threat… I think it is to early tomake this sort of statements. You are all over gear people in epics running level 70 dungeons that have been nerfed and re-nerfed continuously for almost two years. You have done all of it a million times on 1-2-5 characters… God knows how many. You probably know every pull, every mob, every boss and every strategy. So, yes, it is easy now.
On level 80 tanking, and PvE in general, might be easy, brainless, without CC or it might be bit tricky with different strategy for every pull. You just don’t know jet.
Crushing blows aren’t something that I will miss. In my opinion those where crap from the start. Really bad mechanic. It is silly to have whole fight depend on luck. 25 people does everything right. DPS right mob at right time. Have enough DPS. Move when needed. Click when they must. And so on… and all of that can be pointless if you get unlucky with one hit.
Getting passive crush resist is possible but at great cost to other important stats. It wasn’t viable for real tanking. It was just something tanks did for fun. Just to that they can say they have it…
Removal of stance dancing is bit disappointing. But when you look at it… it was just pressing right macro at right moment. Result of that was loss of almost all rage aka less threat and a moment in witch you could take even more DMG. Stance dancing was viable only on boss fights when you planed for it in advance. You had only one target and you kept your eye on timers and it was, to be 100% honest, easy.
I don’t mind having one more button to press while tanking. Overall it gives bit more rage and ability to brake fear on every day basis. I mean, you cant go to 5 man instance, pull a group of 6 mobs and stand in berserker stance waiting for one of those 6 to fear you…
In general, nerfing of PvE content and buffing of players in my opinion isn’t anything bad. In few weeks we will all be 80. People who want to see ‘old’ stuff will be able to do it in solo, in small groups or raids (depending on where you go, of course). It will be easy to clear just as level 60 stuff was on 70. So, I don’t see any special reason why they shouldn’t be able to do it on 70 too since it won’t matter soon anyway.
Like others said, you’ll be able to tell a mediocre tank from a great tank at 80, beacuse great tanks will be the ones you grab to do the raid “challenges”.
I look back at the work it took me to be one of the few elite warrior tanks that could do heroics with no CC, and I get a little nostalgic. But the fact of the matter is, I dreaded even logging my warrior in unless it was for progression content.
Since 3.0 came out.. i have been non stop balls to the wall with my warrior Tanking heroics leading Kara and ZA raids everytime the instance has reset just to make sure i know the ins and outs of what i can get away with. I have NEVER had this much fun playing my warrior. I am not specced into titans grip so i can dual weild my Jin’Rok and my GOrehowl, however, i am not really convinced that it is all that great, I will go back to Prot probably today just becuase Fury cant hold a candle to 900-1000 DPS in full block gear and making those shit head warlocks cry because they are suckin when it comes to recount.
My Shaman and Rogue have maybe seen an hour and a half play time since 3.0 has come out. My warrior has been active enough to accumulate about 150 badges since the patch… thats a lot of running compared to what i was doing before.
As far as separating ourselves from other tanks because threat is not an issue.. Believe me, it is still an issue for people who did not really grasp the class now. I have seen some pretty bad warrior tanks as of late. As vene said. They have to simplify some areas in order to make others more complex. Our dick measuring now comes from other areas instead of hey my TPS is xyz how bout yours? It comes now from knowing how to gear your toon for encounters, how fast to move through raids to keep maximum efficiency of party / raid mana. Wether or not you should pop a little more Defense in for this boss, or maybe stay in your block/str/AP gear for more threat because healing isnt an issue.
The other way we are measured is our situational awareness. Did you notice that mob run by you? charge it! too close to charge? Intervene the person it is pissed at.
Another good way is mob placement when pulling, getting initial aggro with T-clap and then circling themobs around so when you do let that first shockwave off, you dont have any standing outside the cone. Things like THIS will distinguish bad tanks from good ones..
Vigilance IMO so far is a crutch for bad tanks.
I will only get my 490 Defense on if I am tanking Progression bosses, and even then it feels constrictive.
Once nice thing about vigilance is when your MT and OT are both warriors and use it on each other. Especially for the OT.
In ZA, never get a wipe from a taunt resist, because it’ll refresh.
In fights where dps needs to be below the second on threat, it will even out threat (not that it’s a big issue, but it helps when you’re an OT trying to keep up without procing revenge).
Not to mention 3% reduction in damage for tanks isn’t too shabby. But I agree, in heroics and single tank fights, it’s not really required.
I think you’ll find that Vigilance is really going to shine in 5 mans once we get to the point where we can start AOEing at 80. Our single target threat is amazing, but our AOE threat is still going to be challenging I think and Vigilance will likely be the different between AOEers getting to go all out or having to wait a few seconds.
Hmm maybe threat isn’t quite so dead.
I pulled on Brutallus last night, and rode the line on Felmyst. My ret pally buddy was grabbing salvation most of the night to avoid my fate.
I think I’ll be tanking next week though, so we’ll see how badly people are playing.
Meh. There’s something about this post that invites people to brag about e-peen size.
The most notable thing I see is that it is now equally hard to tank as a warrior, paladin, or bear. If you are a great player, worry not- it will still be readily apparent.
–
Threat: I have to tank a level 80 25-man raid before I declare threat dead, but yeah- it seems to be at the moment. The threat mechanic remains in the game though, so I can’t help feeling that it’ll be back.
Crushing Blows: Never really added a lot, and certainly made balancing druids/warriors/paladins difficult. I am honestly glad that Blizzard can now spend their time thinking about more interesting things.
Stance Dancing: Well, ok. I miss it. But I don’t miss having to go zerker/intercept/defense every time I got knocked back when a bear just had to hit the 5 key (and keep all his rage). Stance dancing was something that made me feel like I was at the top of my game- but I didn’t enjoy having to be at the top of my game to meet the baseline of another class that could watch tv while tanking. I DO hope that Blizzard looks for ways to have stance dancing be something that lets you eke out that last bit of performance from your warrior- but I am glad that all the classes have been baselined.
Plus, as someone else mentioned- I’ve been having a blast tanking 10 mobs at a time. I could get used to this.
I’m very happy with the changes. We get good tools for the job, so we don’t have to invest so much in “tanking skills” that were really just basics to overcome the limitations of the inadequate tools that we had.
What that does is remove an early and un-fun stage of tank development. If you were a novice tank who struggled to keep a few mobs on you with thunderclap, avoid getting crushed, stance-dance fear, or something basic like that, well, now it’s easy. If you were an experienced tank you would have mastered these anyway. Maybe your focus would be to develop your speed, active survival, mobility, situational awareness, and other advanced skills that I’ve not encountered yet.
The changes in 3.0 take away the basic annoyances, making tanking relaxing and accessible. That still leaves plenty of room to focus on more advanced skills.
Threat isn’t out of the game if you look at some classes yet it has been increased more for the tanks compared to other classes. I still however o-so-often see either a lock, hunter or esp. ret. paladin very high in threat. On a fight like Twins in SWP threat still counts seeing the MT get’s stunned ever so often and dps have to stay below the OT (this can ofc be more of an OT issue rather than MT, but in the end of the fight our OT tends to catch up to my MT threat).
But yes, threat is less of a huge concern now even if not removed. I sort of like it the way it is. What I don’t like is how trivial the game has become in terms of end-game raiding (we where stuck on Felmyst and with in the patch we came to Kil’Jaden at 25%). I TRULY hope end-game lvl 80 content brings back the need to well “plan” more than just “rape” like we can do now. Our last brutalus kill was a joke, but we managed. I’ll give you that before it was retarded the other way around but yeah…
Sure, crushing blows are dead, and threat’s pretty much a non-issue, but you can still stance-dance if you’re a loonie. Never popped recklessness before an AoE pull?
I haven’t gotten a chance to play beta, but I’m betting that the new changes to how we tank (that are letting us walk over everthing now) are gonna be necessary for post-70 content. Easy-mode won’t be around forever.
Threat is far from dead. The difficulty for a warrior to produce threat has been dramatically lowered, both against single and multiplle targets. The evidence for threat’s continued survival can be found in every crappy 5 man PuG. The deal is, of course, it practically requires people to play stupidly at this point.
Not just a little stupid, either. Like “gets-genitals-stuck-in-microwave” stupid. Intentionally attacking an offtarget with everything you have, attacking a pulled mob when the tank has yet to engage, etc.
I can’t say I miss the passing of the other 2. Threat, however, isn’t dead, just waiting.
On a related note, to threat and stupid people, I’ve noticed a disproportionately high number of Demonology Warlocks who seem to enjoy taunting mobs off of me while I am tanking. Anyone else have this problem? Any possible explanation other than them being stupid?
I have to disagree that the differences between good & bad tanks have disappeared. Vigilance (the trait, not the skill), reflex, & intuition are three solid things which help tanks overcome obstacles which would otherwise chew players up & spit them out.
I’ve seen some tanks since then. A lot of it has to do with gear, but just watching their use of abilities & other minuscule choices has shown me just how inefficient a player can be post-3.0.
I’ve only just started tanking and after 2 years as a healer it’s a totally new and exciting experience to be in the thick of the action. Learning how to build threat rather than avoid building it is interesting as a challenge and having done a lot of research into how threat mechanics work and how to keep up and ahead of the DPS has proved to be a challenge at lower levels.
Having read through the comments here it occurs to me that the problem in tanking post 3.0 is two fold. A lot of players have gear that far outweighs the newly nerfed instances making their own DPS fly off the scale and furthermore, making the DPS a lot more powerful than they used to be. We’ve spent a good couple of years in these instances and know how they work and what to do in them, but we’re running them now with the same thinking we had before 3.0. The net result is that in the future, when people aren’t going into heroics to farm badges in ZA+ gear these will be a challenge again.
I think Blizzard noted that virtually all old world instances stopped being run after TBC and they’re eager not to loose the TBC instances the same way. So they’ve made the previous home of the 70s easier, but the home of the 80s will have it’s new challenges and balance will be restored to the force, erm, game. New characters making their way through Outland will have gear and abilities the will make the old Heroics still a challenge and not the joke they are in out post 3.0 but pre expansion eyes.
Wow, I *really* missed the memo on Zerker Rage being usable in all stances now. I was still stance dancing after the patch to use it.
The biggest change for me thus far is no longer having to spec for rage gen with all the raid buffs I’m getting. When I had all my rage gen tech going I just couldn’t dump it fast enough. A result of this, though, is points going into things like Armored to the Teeth, Imp Revenge (which is finally useful beyond trash mobs now), and Imp Spell Reflection. With Imp SR now, I can be either really lazy or act as a back-up of the RoS fight, standing beside the tank and covering him with my spell reflect.
I wouldn’t call threat dead by any means yet. On my guild’s first attempt on Brutalus I forgot to stop my threat cycle when the other tank taunted off of me. As a result, when his taunt faded, he turned around and gave me a whole lot of pain, and wiped the raid shortly there after. There’s currently only one tank in my guild that can keep up with my single target threat now, and oddlye enough, he’s a pally.
I got so burnt on tanking before the patch. I was at the point where if a dps pulled aggro in a heroic, I eagerly watched them get mashed to a pulp. I was tired of dailies taking forever. I was tired of being sub-par in the battlegrounds. I watched the DPS in my casual guild easily outgear me through PvP, while I slogged through heroics with pug groups. Instead of taking my friends into instances, I took CC. Sure I could have held aggro on 4 mob pulls, but years of physical work, contact sports, and gaming made my wrists throb.
All in all, it was pretty lame. I’m glad that the “Sunder, Sunder, Revenge, Shield slam, and throw in a few tabs and thunderclaps” rotation is dead. I played a warrior because I liked being an armored dreadnaught, not some meatbag who has to beg puny mages and cowardly rogues to lock his enemies.
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October 21st, 2008 at 11:27 pm
No we don’t. You’re a liar, sir.
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October 21st, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Blizzard knows there is a lack of tanks and thing they will get more if they make it as easy as DPS. This is a sad time for those that tank well.
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Desmurick reply on October 22, 2008 4:59 am:
I completely agree. I went out of my way the last week before xpac to tank heroic Shat Halls and various other challenging heroics without CC because I knew once 3.0 came it would be too easy. What I’ve always loved most about tanking is the challenge and the ability to keep it exciting by going faster and faster, using less and less CC until there was none, and just generally always keeping it interesting and complex enough to be fun. Not to mention, it was the fact that everyone couldn’t do it, let alone do it well, that made tanking so special; some of that is gone now.
I will say, however, that I’ve still been able to have fun with it. The trick is to just pull as many mobs as you can without dying. Before that may have been 6, or 7; now it’s 16 and up, depending on the mobs and how good your healer is. I’ve even stopped bothering to mark. It’s still challenging if you try pulling 16 guys at once in heroic Slabs, for example, or entire sections in heroic MGT (no CC FTW, when it comes to fun that is.) The best upside is that I’m a lot less annoyed with DPS now. I no longer care when DPS doesn’t focus fire. Point being, its still exciting if you’re crazy enough to abandon all the old rules.
The good tanks will always stand out from the rest regardless of the patches. It’s a mindset that makes us stand out; that’s not released with patches and xpacs.
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Nios reply on October 22, 2008 6:32 am:
Agreed. Good tanks will always rise to the top because there are other aspects to being a tank than the talents provided. Accepting responsibilty for the raid’s safety is not for everyone and will filter out players that are just DPS oriented. Right now everything is nerfed compared to the new talents, but with the new expansion I expect raids/instances to get “tough” again and when that happens there will be another polarization of the class seperating the men from the boys. Chances are if you visit this site, you will make that cut.
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kuju reply on October 22, 2008 9:52 am:
Agree completely. Wait until xpac and 70-80 instances. There’s more to tanking than what’s being discussed here. People who think in DPS will continue to think in DPS. They’ll still shy away from accepting responsibility for the safety of the group. I’ll wager that come 80 and DKs there will still be a tank shortage because it’s a mentality and skill thing that make a good in-demand tank.
I for one can’t wait to find out! Also, I do not mourn stance dancing.
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:33 am
I’ll miss those 3 things like I do my in laws. Well maybe not threat, I’m going to say he’s in a coma at least til Ulduar.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 12:57 am
I have to saw I love tanking now in post 3.0 patch, and look forward to the X-pac, but the bar has been lowered a bit in terms of the required skill needed to do it well.
But hell, I am having too much damn fun to care about it too much. Bring on the Raid bosses!
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Arvernien reply on October 22, 2008 5:51 pm:
The skill required has been lowered to do it. It’s still up there if you want to do it well.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 1:44 am
i think threat has been fixed (albeit us being gods until wrath)
But the other two i will miss. My friend who tanked most of BWL for progression whinged about them allowing the use of thunder clap in def stance. Now i am whinging that they put zerker rage in all stances.
Crushing blows spiced up encounters. I am going to miss them too.
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Kazuma reply on October 22, 2008 2:47 am:
I don’t miss crushing blows at all. Spamming shield block was no fun to me.
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Khrushchev reply on October 22, 2008 2:53 am:
Agreed. Shield Block was the most annoying thing ever invented. Having to spam a single ability just to survive was neither skillful nor good design.
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Blackavar reply on October 22, 2008 3:52 pm:
Well you can always have the fun of crushing blows by not getting back to 490 defense. Keep some crits in the mix.
Draco reply on October 22, 2008 4:40 pm:
well 490 def is not required to be uncritable anymore is it? Did i miss something somewhere did they increase the crit chance of mobs? I have been concentrating on ability changes not game mechanic changes. I have 5.12% crit reduction in 478 def or there abouts.
Blackavar reply on October 22, 2008 8:08 pm:
Yes, you still need 490 defense. A level 73 mob has a 5.6% chance to crit you, and always has.
October 22nd, 2008 at 2:24 am
Crushing blows gave tanking that edge, especially when you are leading the raid I will miss this, i wouldn’t say threat has gone….mabye threat in terms to pushing alot out with relitively little effort was doing about 1100-1400 which i think is good, though now its nearer to 3000 (i think… omen3 doesn’t display my TPS very well if at all) doubling the top DPS….and I don’t even have full points in cruelty, incite or improved revenge yet..
I will miss stance dancing though (bar the rare time I may need to use intercept) happy memorys of getting knocked flying by blackheart the inciter in heroic SL only to switch stances in mid air and charge back in making you look like a pro….R.I.P *builds monument*
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Albinobeard reply on October 22, 2008 10:08 am:
Now you get to spec into Warbringer and be a bad ass AND get rage back! My greatest moments now are in the headless horseman fight, charging him then intervene the person that summoned. You start flying around like superman!
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October 22nd, 2008 at 4:47 am
I’m wearing black.
(It helps that Onslaught is black, but the mourning sentimentality is still very much there).
What skills and abilities that separate a good tank, from a bad one - are rapidly disappearing.
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Rudolf reply on October 22, 2008 5:54 am:
Hmm This is tricky. Warrior tanks had the most DO or DIE approach when it came to performance. If you had troubles, the whole party/raid immediately knew about it, even when it wasn’t always your fault. All the while that rogue could output half the DPS of another and only a meter would be able to pin the shortcomings on him.
Making it simpler for most warriors to hold aggro lets good warriors distinguish themselves with tons of subtle things: Your pulling, your awareness, your damage, your spec/gear choice, your mobility, your timing with Shield Block, Spell Reflect, Shield Bash and all three 5-min cooldowns… all these things and more are still there.
Warriors who thought they reached the epitome of flawless skills because they could hold aggro will be forced to shift their mindset a bit.
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Veneretio reply on October 22, 2008 6:37 am:
The game’s difficulty always remains the same. They have to simplify in order to add complexity. While, we should mourn what use to be some of the skill defining aspects of tanking, we can also expect that on the horizon there are new ways for us to separate ourselves from our fellow tanks.
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koomo reply on October 24, 2008 7:18 am:
This is true for other classes. A shadowpriest wearing grays can now generate the same mana for the party as a 8/8 T6 can.
If not for this ridiculously addictive achievement fetish I’m caught up in, I’d be parking all of my toons for quite awhile.
Blizzard puts a lot of money into customer research. Clearly, they found that their best hope in maintaining monthly subscriptions was to lower the bar and to make us all “good”. A sign of the times.
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Veneretio reply on October 24, 2008 8:23 am:
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this game. There is always another edge. There is always another way to define yourself as the superior tank. Those that content themselves with believing that we’re all equal inevitably end up inferior.
Never stop the search.
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Sudiin reply on October 28, 2008 2:26 am:
I couldn’t agree more. And yet again, wait and see how things (tanking) will turn out at 80. Heck, just wait till Nexus and Utgard Keep.
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Hao reply on February 4, 2009 12:30 pm:
I’m learning from running heroics (now that we are a good 3 months into wrath) that pugging with a terrible healer can bring out the skills a good tank has. It will make you better aware of your surroundings and it sometimes forces you to come up with interesting fixes to some issues. In Nexus I literally spam Spell Reflect when tanking casters. in UK, Ingvar can cause trouble with his dark smash and his aoe silence. I kinda came up with a strat after the fact which I nickname the metronome strategy (just for my bad memory). tank ingvar close to one pillar near the end of teh platform. when he does his dark smash, i move to one side using ingvar as a pivot point. the casters move the opposite way I do and it is easier to get behind a pillar to LOS his aoe. eh, there might be some bumps to smooth out with it, but it worked.
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:44 am
I’ve paid my dues and have fought tooth and nail (bear-tank). I’m happy with the changes so far. After so many frustrating runs trying to hold agro on 4 plus mobs and doing it I can say that I don’t miss it. I would say take a wait and see stance on what has happened. The real test will be in the level 80 instances. Things are so out of whack right now at the level 70 game that I don’t think you can really judge things yet.
One thing I LOVE now is that I can join aoe groups as a tank and consider myself dps. With swipe hitting unlimited mobs and glyph of maul doubling up smacks it is a lot of fun watching the rain-of-numbers. In those Hyjal groups the warriors are tanking, but instead of going kitty dps I switch to bear.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 6:51 am
I liked threat the way it was before the patch. I too mourn its passing.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 6:59 am
Very clever picture! With all the changes, though, my guild’s DPS is so trigger happy and they’re opening up before I’ve pulled…with the difficulty so tuned down, people have gotten so sloppy. Not many people die for it, as it is easy to get aggro back, but I’m just a bit surprised at how much discipline has been lost in a week.
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vorp reply on October 22, 2008 9:36 am:
I know how you feel. I’m badge geared with some Kara/pvp pieces. I was running a heroic the other night with the two highest dps characters/players in the guild, both of whom outgear me. I was having the hunter pull groups with multishot (a lot of which did crit), and I was easily able to pull threat with a single thunderclap. It just doesn’t seem right. Misdirect….huh?
I do however like that new UI feature that tells you when a mob has charged targets. is losing threat, or has high threat. But, maybe that is just lazy on my part too?
I do LOVE tanking Heroic MGT now. Now I know why Paladins thought it was fun. With the shockwave stun and the dmg that concussion blow does, its easy to keep the Succubi and the healing mobs under control. I love blowing up the wyrm room in a single pull with my AP gear. Good times.
I guess you just have to take the bad with the good.
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sygvox reply on October 22, 2008 9:38 am:
I can’t agree more. I ran Kara on my mage after the patch, and I was running it like normal, only to realize rather quickly that NONE of the los pulls were making it into range for me to nuke them, ’cause melee was already attacking them where they stood!
I was incredibly surprised. I mean, sure, kara is little more than a race to the top anymore, but before the patch we always executed it with some precision, and now it’s just like grouping for SSO dailies. Everyone’s in the same general area killing whatever they see that isn’t dead yet.
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Draco reply on October 22, 2008 5:00 pm:
I totally agree bosephus. I see so much discipline being lost after this patch. Dps is so very sloppy not one cares about good solid, precise team work. I think it will be quite hilarious to see the new inexperienced dps and upcoming tanks that take this for granted and do not understand the true complexity of tanking. I think we’ll be seeing many our fellow friends and guildies eat the dirt come exp time. I on the other hand do like to mix it up by pulling as quickly and as many as possible. I still watch a ret pally and how extraordinary their dps is now try and tank off me and on the off chance that I’m taking it easy in a pull they nearly die… i do it on purpose so they don’t forget what they are supposed to be doing.
I’m in love with the changes and if the designers have any hand in the game truly we will not be nerfed because we shouldn’t… i laugh at the pvp babies that think were OP, no your just not used to us being able to stop your face in!!!!
Back to the point of all of this, threat was broken it was stupid we couldn’t do anything but essentially “mythically” making mobs pissed at us by breaking their armor and not them…. How many of you truly think of a warrior in all its glory not as a destruction machine? Warriors kill things its what we do and have always done… now we can show it for real. We have been the most underdeveloped class in the history of this game. We finally got the recognition now we can show everyone what we can do.
I’m more than a bit excited to see what the instances will be like in the expansion. I should read up more on all the new tid bits.
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Talldar reply on October 23, 2008 5:37 am:
Totally agree. I was in ZA yesterday with a guild I ran with before the patch. The first run was very well done indeed, good times and a solid output with 2 timechests.
Yesterday … it was horrible. On Teamspeak they only were flaming about “stupid achivements”, “wow is for idiots now”, “everythings pointless”, bla bla. No one lead the raid, no targets were marked, no direction given. On the first boss fight they “suddenly realized” that there was only one healer. We didn’t get one time chest.
The bosskills were sloppy, trashpulls were sloppy (DpS running ahead and pulling randomly) and when I said that it might be better if I MT’d bossfights rather than the full-raidbuffed 15k health Pala I got a flame-income on Teamspeak about “how stupid we warriors are that we think only health mattered, we idiots only socketing for +sta and not having an idea that other stats were important”.
Even the other tank, from the same guild, whispered to me and said he was sorry for that.
It was the most horrible organized & executed raid, with the “raid leader” being nothing but disappointed about all the changes and being a complete dick all over.
I’m looking forward to balanced content again, when DPS will be 1- or twoshot in a raid if they can’t turn down their egos. For now … I’ll take it easy. Raiding can wait, especially if all of a sudden everyone thinks they can act like total idiots and excuse everything with “it’s patch-nerfed, don’t whine around and let me have some fun”.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 7:07 am
I’ve been wondering, since the need to maximize threat has been minimized and even rage-starvation has been mitigated with the free shield slams and heroic strikes, how is that going to affect the badge order?
I’m a little late to the game, so I’m just now getting enough badges to start buying stuff. It seems though, that the driving factor in a lot of the ordering was hit/expertise for the purpose of building threat or avoidance to mitigate crushing blows. Obviously neither of those factors is eliminated, but perhaps the priority has changed.
Basically though I’m hoping to see a badge pick order for WotLK so that I can make the most informed choices heading into Northrend.
Aside from that, though, I too have been willing to jump into a Heroic with no CC whereas in the past I wasn’t really comfortable without two. There have actually been times where I asked a hunter or other lesser CC (all others are secondary to mages imo) to just not bother, I’ve been having such a blast tanking it all.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 7:37 am
And we cheer for the introduction of
DPS!
AOE threat!
Not being so wildly superior to the other tank classes that we can’t always share the same sandbox!
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October 22nd, 2008 at 7:41 am
We have been having a blast with the new tanking along with the buffing of damage for the raid, simply for the fact that we don’t have enough people in our guild to hit 25 man content. We were able to 15 man Gruul and Mag and we’re finally getting to see some of the higher end raid content.
I will miss stance dancing though. Even though it could be performed easily by a macro, it was a sure sign of a good tank.
As an aside, we just recently went back and did some classic raiding. You can get back at those dps’ers that have lost all that discipline by spinning Onyxia when you’re tanking her. It was a blast!
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October 22nd, 2008 at 7:50 am
I’m enjoying the changes. It may be easy at the moment but how will it be at level 80?
Blizz had to do something to get more people to play tanks. I get tells every time I long on asking me to tank this or that from people I don’t even know. Then I get more of the same from guildies. Our guild has over 100 level 70’s and only 5 of those are tanks.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 9:07 am
Only the leftmost gravestone gets my flowers…
Rare enough as it was, I enjoyed the stancedances to break fears or to intercept out of knockbacks. The question was never whether you used a macro for it or not, but rather if you were able to do it reliable in that very small time-window, stancedance had to be very precise timing to be effective, now you don’t have to watch timers or cast bars anymore, you just hit zerker rage whenever… if you do get feared for a second, who cares, you can still break it. So yeah, this was a dumbing down.
Threat gets replaced with damage, I sure can live with that. I’m very much enjoying heroics again all of a sudden, not only because I can aoe tank now but because I can finally be as powerful as my gear-level suggests. I can now wear my tier6 tank gear in heroics, I don’t have to gimp my survivability anymore just to produce adequate threat. I’m doing more threat, even respectable damage, yet I need less healing. That’s how it should always have been when you vastly outgear the content you’re tanking.
Crushing blows, anything that can screw you over by means of pure RNG is not a fun mechanic. Even as a diligant shieldblock user you could have that moment where the crushing RNG would just destroy you, fast attacking bosses like Prince or Morogrim were notorious for this when you were doing them at the intended gearlevel.
I didn’t mind the shieldblock spam, it felt like I was actively doing something for my survival rather than just spamming threat moves. However the new shieldblock is so awesome that I won’t miss the old one a bit. It gives me options now what to do with it rather than just spamming it. I can use it as emergency button, I can use it as a threatbooster (or should I say, “damagebooster” hehe)
My summary is: the changes to warriors and tanking are awesome, I think a lot of the QQ about reduced skill atm comes from the massive big nerf to all the raid instances, not from the new class mechanics. That nerf was indeed uncalled for and over the top, but in a month nobody will really care about it anyway, so let’s just look ahead
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Draco reply on October 22, 2008 5:06 pm:
I think thats why blizzard nerfed the content so it didn’t go the way of MC and BWL when TBC came out. Everyone is rushing to content that they couldn’t have done before and now that blizz seemingly fixed all the classes we are doing it. I got to see hyjal and i never thought i’d be able to before the new expansion. Everyone is running and doing as many instances as possible and it doesn’t take 2-3 hours.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 9:08 am
I guess I can see both sides of the coin. I’m not nearly at the level of tanking that alot of you guys were prior to the patch. I had just started tanking Kara about a month prior. My gear was pretty crappy and if I was grouped with gung-ho dps or CC challenged members, it made tanking both stressful & irritating. I’m sure with the current patch coupled with the fact that the current content isn’t really optimized for it, it does make it much easier and forgiving. Heroics I use to dread running I’m now speed pulling in and clearing in like 30mins. That certainly makes it funnier and maybe makes up for those stressful runs where you leave cursing the other people in your group. Honestly at this point at my lvl of progression the biggest challenge is finding healers who can keep up as I pull a whole room.
Although like others have said, I have no doubt Blizzard is aware of this and once the expansion comes out they will make sure tanking becomes more of a challenge again. But for now I’m going to enjoy the fun and gear upgrades that comes along with the patch.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 10:22 am
Stance dancing was a lot of fun for me personally.
I know there are a lot of tanks out there who just macrod that all away but Moving though kara all the way to sunwell I always danced out of fears and other things manually. Actually gave me something to do that required a little more coordination than 2344.
I did like having a rotation though. So I could remain 100% focused on the encounter without having to even look at the buttons because I knew what to press and have a pretty good idea of exactly how long 1.5s is.
With the loss of a threat rotation they really had to make it easier to stop good tanks from getting RNG as much.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 10:33 am
They did what? Zerker rage in all stances??!? Missed that one…
I don’t have enough fingers for all of the things that I want to do now. Are you using addons to bridge the gap, or just a lot of keybinds?
And I know this is probably moot, but what is the rotation of choice now for multi-tanking?
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October 22nd, 2008 at 10:52 am
Devestate. Is anyone else considering not speccing into it? I never use it anymore. Shield slam, concussion blow (even on bosses), revenge, thunderclap and Shockwave. I’m thinking about dropping cruelty as well. I might put down my high dps executioner enchanted Blazefury for something with more mitigation stats like the Sun Eater for every encounter. Am I going overboard?
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Veneretio reply on October 22, 2008 11:24 am:
You’ve gotta spec into Devastate to get Sword and Board. Not to mention, you’ll lose a ton of threat keeping up Sunders with just Sunder rather than Devastate. So yup, overboard
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mavfin reply on October 22, 2008 3:57 pm:
Yep, overboard. Devastate triggers sword and board for free Shield Slams! If I don’t have anything better to hit on a GCD, I’ll hit devastate to possibly proc S&B.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 11:30 am
we’re now better than ever at beating the crap out of things. beating the crap out of things is fun, imo.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 am
RIP TPS. Hail to the new King: DPS!
There will always be good and bad tanks, as there is good and bad Warlock. We will just be judged differently - its a shift a paradigm. Now a good tank will be the one doing more DPS than the other one. He will also be the one able to use all the new toys we get effectively. Trust me, some peoples will be overwhelmed by the numbers of new ability and won’t be able to use them properly. Those are the same that were doing 25% less TPS than you with the same gear pre-3.0. I already forsee a bad tank not being able to maximize his Shield Slam during his Shield Block buff.
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Beefbringer reply on October 23, 2008 1:53 am:
TSP output its never a judge on who is the better tank IMO.
I have had people spec for highest TSP and get smashed into pulp because they didn’t go for that extra armour/avoidance/health.
There also needs to be taken into consideration, possitioning/spacial awareness, knowledge, choseing the right gear for the fight, or in my case, effectively leading 9-24 other people.
Some of our tanks in my guild always try to out theat me then rub it in my face, on the rare occasion they do I get the “I outtank you HA!” shortly followed by them getting owned by whatever boss they decide to take off me (Why can’t we get the innitial treat burst of pallys :P) . I call that inferiority complex.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Good tanks are always in demand =). People will notice especially if they got spoiled by a good tank which was the case pre 3.0.
Like many other have said have fun tanking. In the meantime get out there and show off your uber TPS!
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October 22nd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Well, I sure don’t miss crushing blows - having to constantly refresh an ability every 3 seconds was, to say the least, annoying as hell. It goes past a question of skill or technique, because after a while it becomes a mechanical move that requires no thinking, no strategy. Shield block is still there though - and it will allow for more interesting uses (timing it to match some specific boss ability, for example).
Stance-dancing was also not fun in my opinion, not because of the ability required, but mostly because the rage loss involved made choices pretty limited after switching stances. They could have merged the reduced rage loss from stance mastery into some other protection talent, making stance-dancing more interesting. But if I had to choose between now and before 3.0, I’d definitely go with now.
Finally, threat… As someone else said, I think threat is temporarily set to easymode, but after the expansion hits and we all hit 80, DPS classes will also be strong enough to make us sweat to keep up…
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October 22nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Exactly, in my server a tank is a rare commodity but now with 3.0 ppl with tanking alts are coming out of nowhere like they were waiting for it to become easier.
But i out threat a pally so im happy. =]
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October 22nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
on that note too woo for me warr tanks getting 1k dps =]
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October 22nd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
DPS and Tanking are no longer mutually exclusive. This is a good thing. I love playing BGs as prot. NOW they put in a DPS meter for honor calculation! DAMN YOUS BLIZZ. What about the tanks that GUARD the tower or flag?
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October 22nd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
1. That was super cheesy.
2. I do mourn those things, especially stance dancing.
It’s just not the same…there was so much finesse to stance dancing and building threat…poo.
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Tamros reply on October 22, 2008 10:22 pm:
i just used the macro o.O for stance dancing lol
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Tara reply on October 23, 2008 10:50 am:
Not just for berserker rage, for intercept also. The best part about warriors is the stance game…take that away…you take away a lot of the fun for me.
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admin reply on October 23, 2008 11:20 am:
Ya, charge has all but eliminated the use of intercept. There may still be some very rare situations when you’ll want to use it though.
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Yup, I know I am mourning the 2 most perverse and rediculous aspects of the game suddenly disapearing. I’m totally sad that blizzard has fixed our retardedly broken threat gen, too. Also, I enjoy pounding in deck nails with my hands, opening bottles with my teeth, and going overseas by rowboat instead of flying. Cuz I’m xxHArdCoRExx.
/quit sarcasm
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October 22nd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Vene, you are correct that stance dancing and crushing blow have died, or perhaps just gone into a permenant vegetative state. I think threat on the other hand is just on a leave of absence. Expect WotLK bosses to cleave through the rest of the party like Prince does when the tank dies. If you lose threat or die expect a wipe.
Our role is more that just the threat king. We’re most likely the party and raid leader. We set the pace, we take the damage, we work with the healers and we keep it all together. A good tank will be more than just a toon in heavy armor. It’s a toon played by someone with an ability to manage multiple demands. The tank player is watching mana, mobs, looking out for adds, watching the dpsers and applies extra threat when necessary. Now that we have noticable DPS a good tank will also know when to step up the damage, and when to use trinkets and abilities to delay their own death. These skills are what set good tanks apart from others and they are not dead.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
threat was stupid and so were crushing blows. mitigating crushing blows was mindless. threat was gear and hitting the same 4 abilities in sequence. the game is much better when its active.
id say stance dancing still has its place. i would agree that i miss zerker rage to break fears; it felt like a way to separate a mediocre tank from a good tank. i still use stance dancing when i want to use all three of my charges and when i want to use a particular discipline, though. i also stance dance when im dpsing as prot to, for example, throw up spell reflect and protect a nearby ally. we have enough skills and there is enough room to code creative encounters that i wouldnt count stance dancing out yet.
threat and crushing blows were completely idiotic though.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 10:44 pm
stance dancing was a way to really show off, but the loss of rage kept me from doing it unless totally necessary…
The new warbringer lets me zoom around on casters when i cant los well… i love having the main pack at bay, charging and silencing the caster then back to the rest of the mob… also found that i can also add more dps to the fight…. If i slack on revenge and sword and board my dps drops alot… i think good tanks will now do amazing dps as well as protecting the group…
Plus running lowbies is hysterical now… Pulling whole rooms at a time.. too much fun….
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October 23rd, 2008 at 3:00 am
I dont mourn a second. Being a casual player with no RL opportunity to raid for 5 hours 2 times a week, I can suddenly get to see parts of the game that was impossible before. I know most ppl here are hardcore players and ubertanks – big respect to all of you – but for the rest of us this change brings only more fun to the game.
Played this game for 2 years as tank and now finally I have made my first complete Kara run :O
*$
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October 23rd, 2008 at 4:37 am
About threat… I think it is to early tomake this sort of statements. You are all over gear people in epics running level 70 dungeons that have been nerfed and re-nerfed continuously for almost two years. You have done all of it a million times on 1-2-5 characters… God knows how many. You probably know every pull, every mob, every boss and every strategy. So, yes, it is easy now.
On level 80 tanking, and PvE in general, might be easy, brainless, without CC or it might be bit tricky with different strategy for every pull. You just don’t know jet.
Crushing blows aren’t something that I will miss. In my opinion those where crap from the start. Really bad mechanic. It is silly to have whole fight depend on luck. 25 people does everything right. DPS right mob at right time. Have enough DPS. Move when needed. Click when they must. And so on… and all of that can be pointless if you get unlucky with one hit.
Getting passive crush resist is possible but at great cost to other important stats. It wasn’t viable for real tanking. It was just something tanks did for fun. Just to that they can say they have it…
Removal of stance dancing is bit disappointing. But when you look at it… it was just pressing right macro at right moment. Result of that was loss of almost all rage aka less threat and a moment in witch you could take even more DMG. Stance dancing was viable only on boss fights when you planed for it in advance. You had only one target and you kept your eye on timers and it was, to be 100% honest, easy.
I don’t mind having one more button to press while tanking. Overall it gives bit more rage and ability to brake fear on every day basis. I mean, you cant go to 5 man instance, pull a group of 6 mobs and stand in berserker stance waiting for one of those 6 to fear you…
In general, nerfing of PvE content and buffing of players in my opinion isn’t anything bad. In few weeks we will all be 80. People who want to see ‘old’ stuff will be able to do it in solo, in small groups or raids (depending on where you go, of course). It will be easy to clear just as level 60 stuff was on 70. So, I don’t see any special reason why they shouldn’t be able to do it on 70 too since it won’t matter soon anyway.
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Meatgazer reply on October 23, 2008 7:42 am:
Like others said, you’ll be able to tell a mediocre tank from a great tank at 80, beacuse great tanks will be the ones you grab to do the raid “challenges”.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 8:59 am
I look back at the work it took me to be one of the few elite warrior tanks that could do heroics with no CC, and I get a little nostalgic. But the fact of the matter is, I dreaded even logging my warrior in unless it was for progression content.
Since 3.0 came out.. i have been non stop balls to the wall with my warrior Tanking heroics leading Kara and ZA raids everytime the instance has reset just to make sure i know the ins and outs of what i can get away with. I have NEVER had this much fun playing my warrior. I am not specced into titans grip so i can dual weild my Jin’Rok and my GOrehowl, however, i am not really convinced that it is all that great, I will go back to Prot probably today just becuase Fury cant hold a candle to 900-1000 DPS in full block gear and making those shit head warlocks cry because they are suckin when it comes to recount.
My Shaman and Rogue have maybe seen an hour and a half play time since 3.0 has come out. My warrior has been active enough to accumulate about 150 badges since the patch… thats a lot of running compared to what i was doing before.
As far as separating ourselves from other tanks because threat is not an issue.. Believe me, it is still an issue for people who did not really grasp the class now. I have seen some pretty bad warrior tanks as of late. As vene said. They have to simplify some areas in order to make others more complex. Our dick measuring now comes from other areas instead of hey my TPS is xyz how bout yours? It comes now from knowing how to gear your toon for encounters, how fast to move through raids to keep maximum efficiency of party / raid mana. Wether or not you should pop a little more Defense in for this boss, or maybe stay in your block/str/AP gear for more threat because healing isnt an issue.
The other way we are measured is our situational awareness. Did you notice that mob run by you? charge it! too close to charge? Intervene the person it is pissed at.
Another good way is mob placement when pulling, getting initial aggro with T-clap and then circling themobs around so when you do let that first shockwave off, you dont have any standing outside the cone. Things like THIS will distinguish bad tanks from good ones..
Vigilance IMO so far is a crutch for bad tanks.
I will only get my 490 Defense on if I am tanking Progression bosses, and even then it feels constrictive.
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Draco reply on October 29, 2008 9:10 am:
crits are still something to worry about, that is what 490 def is for.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
Once nice thing about vigilance is when your MT and OT are both warriors and use it on each other. Especially for the OT.
In ZA, never get a wipe from a taunt resist, because it’ll refresh.
In fights where dps needs to be below the second on threat, it will even out threat (not that it’s a big issue, but it helps when you’re an OT trying to keep up without procing revenge).
Not to mention 3% reduction in damage for tanks isn’t too shabby. But I agree, in heroics and single tank fights, it’s not really required.
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admin reply on October 23, 2008 10:32 am:
I think you’ll find that Vigilance is really going to shine in 5 mans once we get to the point where we can start AOEing at 80. Our single target threat is amazing, but our AOE threat is still going to be challenging I think and Vigilance will likely be the different between AOEers getting to go all out or having to wait a few seconds.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Hmm maybe threat isn’t quite so dead.
I pulled on Brutallus last night, and rode the line on Felmyst. My ret pally buddy was grabbing salvation most of the night to avoid my fate.
I think I’ll be tanking next week though, so we’ll see how badly people are playing.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Meh. There’s something about this post that invites people to brag about e-peen size.
The most notable thing I see is that it is now equally hard to tank as a warrior, paladin, or bear. If you are a great player, worry not- it will still be readily apparent.
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Threat: I have to tank a level 80 25-man raid before I declare threat dead, but yeah- it seems to be at the moment. The threat mechanic remains in the game though, so I can’t help feeling that it’ll be back.
Crushing Blows: Never really added a lot, and certainly made balancing druids/warriors/paladins difficult. I am honestly glad that Blizzard can now spend their time thinking about more interesting things.
Stance Dancing: Well, ok. I miss it. But I don’t miss having to go zerker/intercept/defense every time I got knocked back when a bear just had to hit the 5 key (and keep all his rage). Stance dancing was something that made me feel like I was at the top of my game- but I didn’t enjoy having to be at the top of my game to meet the baseline of another class that could watch tv while tanking. I DO hope that Blizzard looks for ways to have stance dancing be something that lets you eke out that last bit of performance from your warrior- but I am glad that all the classes have been baselined.
Plus, as someone else mentioned- I’ve been having a blast tanking 10 mobs at a time. I could get used to this.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I’m very happy with the changes. We get good tools for the job, so we don’t have to invest so much in “tanking skills” that were really just basics to overcome the limitations of the inadequate tools that we had.
What that does is remove an early and un-fun stage of tank development. If you were a novice tank who struggled to keep a few mobs on you with thunderclap, avoid getting crushed, stance-dance fear, or something basic like that, well, now it’s easy. If you were an experienced tank you would have mastered these anyway. Maybe your focus would be to develop your speed, active survival, mobility, situational awareness, and other advanced skills that I’ve not encountered yet.
The changes in 3.0 take away the basic annoyances, making tanking relaxing and accessible. That still leaves plenty of room to focus on more advanced skills.
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October 24th, 2008 at 4:19 am
Threat isn’t out of the game if you look at some classes yet it has been increased more for the tanks compared to other classes. I still however o-so-often see either a lock, hunter or esp. ret. paladin very high in threat. On a fight like Twins in SWP threat still counts seeing the MT get’s stunned ever so often and dps have to stay below the OT (this can ofc be more of an OT issue rather than MT, but in the end of the fight our OT tends to catch up to my MT threat).
But yes, threat is less of a huge concern now even if not removed. I sort of like it the way it is. What I don’t like is how trivial the game has become in terms of end-game raiding (we where stuck on Felmyst and with in the patch we came to Kil’Jaden at 25%). I TRULY hope end-game lvl 80 content brings back the need to well “plan” more than just “rape” like we can do now. Our last brutalus kill was a joke, but we managed. I’ll give you that before it was retarded the other way around but yeah…
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October 24th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Breaking News!
CC was admitted into hospital last night, condition is stable but doctors are keeping a close eye on the situation.
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October 24th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Sure, crushing blows are dead, and threat’s pretty much a non-issue, but you can still stance-dance if you’re a loonie. Never popped recklessness before an AoE pull?
I haven’t gotten a chance to play beta, but I’m betting that the new changes to how we tank (that are letting us walk over everthing now) are gonna be necessary for post-70 content. Easy-mode won’t be around forever.
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October 24th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Threat is far from dead. The difficulty for a warrior to produce threat has been dramatically lowered, both against single and multiplle targets. The evidence for threat’s continued survival can be found in every crappy 5 man PuG. The deal is, of course, it practically requires people to play stupidly at this point.
Not just a little stupid, either. Like “gets-genitals-stuck-in-microwave” stupid. Intentionally attacking an offtarget with everything you have, attacking a pulled mob when the tank has yet to engage, etc.
I can’t say I miss the passing of the other 2. Threat, however, isn’t dead, just waiting.
On a related note, to threat and stupid people, I’ve noticed a disproportionately high number of Demonology Warlocks who seem to enjoy taunting mobs off of me while I am tanking. Anyone else have this problem? Any possible explanation other than them being stupid?
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October 26th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I have to disagree that the differences between good & bad tanks have disappeared. Vigilance (the trait, not the skill), reflex, & intuition are three solid things which help tanks overcome obstacles which would otherwise chew players up & spit them out.
I’ve seen some tanks since then. A lot of it has to do with gear, but just watching their use of abilities & other minuscule choices has shown me just how inefficient a player can be post-3.0.
Never say never.
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October 27th, 2008 at 2:56 am
I’ve only just started tanking and after 2 years as a healer it’s a totally new and exciting experience to be in the thick of the action. Learning how to build threat rather than avoid building it is interesting as a challenge and having done a lot of research into how threat mechanics work and how to keep up and ahead of the DPS has proved to be a challenge at lower levels.
Having read through the comments here it occurs to me that the problem in tanking post 3.0 is two fold. A lot of players have gear that far outweighs the newly nerfed instances making their own DPS fly off the scale and furthermore, making the DPS a lot more powerful than they used to be. We’ve spent a good couple of years in these instances and know how they work and what to do in them, but we’re running them now with the same thinking we had before 3.0. The net result is that in the future, when people aren’t going into heroics to farm badges in ZA+ gear these will be a challenge again.
I think Blizzard noted that virtually all old world instances stopped being run after TBC and they’re eager not to loose the TBC instances the same way. So they’ve made the previous home of the 70s easier, but the home of the 80s will have it’s new challenges and balance will be restored to the force, erm, game. New characters making their way through Outland will have gear and abilities the will make the old Heroics still a challenge and not the joke they are in out post 3.0 but pre expansion eyes.
Just 2 cents.
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October 28th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
So… is your threat fine?
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November 4th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Wow, I *really* missed the memo on Zerker Rage being usable in all stances now. I was still stance dancing after the patch to use it.
The biggest change for me thus far is no longer having to spec for rage gen with all the raid buffs I’m getting. When I had all my rage gen tech going I just couldn’t dump it fast enough. A result of this, though, is points going into things like Armored to the Teeth, Imp Revenge (which is finally useful beyond trash mobs now), and Imp Spell Reflection. With Imp SR now, I can be either really lazy or act as a back-up of the RoS fight, standing beside the tank and covering him with my spell reflect.
I wouldn’t call threat dead by any means yet. On my guild’s first attempt on Brutalus I forgot to stop my threat cycle when the other tank taunted off of me. As a result, when his taunt faded, he turned around and gave me a whole lot of pain, and wiped the raid shortly there after. There’s currently only one tank in my guild that can keep up with my single target threat now, and oddlye enough, he’s a pally.
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November 11th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I got so burnt on tanking before the patch. I was at the point where if a dps pulled aggro in a heroic, I eagerly watched them get mashed to a pulp. I was tired of dailies taking forever. I was tired of being sub-par in the battlegrounds. I watched the DPS in my casual guild easily outgear me through PvP, while I slogged through heroics with pug groups. Instead of taking my friends into instances, I took CC. Sure I could have held aggro on 4 mob pulls, but years of physical work, contact sports, and gaming made my wrists throb.
All in all, it was pretty lame. I’m glad that the “Sunder, Sunder, Revenge, Shield slam, and throw in a few tabs and thunderclaps” rotation is dead. I played a warrior because I liked being an armored dreadnaught, not some meatbag who has to beg puny mages and cowardly rogues to lock his enemies.
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