RSS feed2008-09-03 23:36:04
Ghost: When does Warrior tanking get easier?
Ghost,
I really do appreciate the attention Warriors in general are getting, but I think there's a serious question that still hasn't been answered. When does tanking with a Warrior get any easier? Is that a goal that you and the other developers are trying to meet?
Engaging in an instance is supposed to be fun and challenging, but for most tanks, it's mostly all challenging, and not much fun having to pay attention to rage management, general threat, the _complete locking down of all our global cooldowns_, and the number of buttons we have to press quickly in order to tank at a level that's seen as below other tank classes.
To use an example: This past weekend I did Karazhan with a protection paladin who tanked the entire instance by himself sans Netherspite, and pulled every single pack and tanked it with minimal effort. Move into mobs, use Avenging Wrath, and Consecrate. That's it. I've done the same feat before as a Warrior, and it went slower and required a lot more effort from the healers and DPS to not pull threat and to make sure they were assisting on the same target.
Granted that tanking larger numbers of mobs is seen as a Paladin niche, and Warriors are capable of doing it, but the amount of effort needed to tank large packs is *not fun*. It's not fun tabbing to each individual mob to throw up Devastates, it's not fun having to hedge guesses on which mob might break free so you'd better be ready to taunt it, and it's not fun having to manage rage to a T.
How does Warbringer make things more fun or easy? Having to swap into Battle Stance and back to Defensive Stance has you lose rage from the Charge itself and the auto attack. More keyclicks are not fun. Worrying about wasting rage isn't fun. Mechanic game-wise, it's superior to Intercept a mob and stun it for three seconds, ensuring that your character will reach the mob in time to taunt it, lets you use Berserker Rage to help your rage generation, instead of Charging a mob, only to have it be _out of range_ of your character by the time it actually arrives at it, and potentially losing more Rage than gaining it?
Another major complaint of mine is the way that the optimal warrior threat rotation is set up - it still is, and it's going to remain Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate. Even with Sword and Board changing things up, it's not even very effective given our ability rotation. Shield Slam cools down in six seconds, and now that Sword and Board no longer procs off Shield Slam, all that Sword and Board does is make Shield Slam rage-free (which is good), but it halves the second benefit, which is Shield Slam being refreshed.
The rotation is stagnant, not fun, and leaves the tanking Warrior pretty much completely GCD locked down, making it incredibly annoying to fit in anything else you might need: A shout, Shield Wall, or Thunder Clap. In order to maintain a high amount of threat, Warriors are still going to have to spam the same four keys over repeatedly. AE tanking for Warriors is going to be absolutely incomparable compared to Paladins/Druids/DKs if Warriors don't have Shockwave.
Vigilance, our newest tool, is not going to magically make people choose Warriors over other tanks. It takes a lot more effort from both the Warrior and his/her group for a Warrior to be effective tanks. Warriors cannot build threat without being hit for Rage, Warriors need to build up to their highest levels of threat, Warriors who go through avoidance strings are going to see their threat drop dramatically. Warriors can't tank mobs effectively without a certain amount of rage incoming - Ferals get extra Rage from critting, Paladins start pulls/encounters with a full "Rage" bar that's replenished via effective healing, DKs refresh runes every 10 seconds and generate Runic Power from using Runic abilities. Warriors need to wait, pick, and choose.
Here's a common example of what very commonly happens to new Warriors who try to tank:
Warrior engages pull with zero rage. Begins taking damage. DPS starts on whatever target is closest. Many DPS classes don't bother paying attention and each DPS class is attacking his/her own mob. Healer finishes a heal on Warrior to replenish damage - healer gets aggro from mobs. Likely the Warrior is tanking his or her one mob fine, is seeing the DPS taking damage, tries to taunt one back, healer pulls heal aggro, mob flies to the healer and is halfway over when the Warrior realizes this, and his/her taunt is down as well.
This seems kind of far-fetched, but I've seen it happen often enough while healing instances on alternate characters. Who hasn't seen a trigger happy healer seem to not understand that Warriors need time to get things going, and not to heal until threat has been built up?
What kind of reaction will a healer have to a Paladin that's able to Consecrate and keep aggro, or a Druid? "Oh, well I had a much easier time not dying when a Paladin/Druid tanked compared to a Warrior".
Suggestions:
1. Take abilities like Shout, Thunderclap, and Revenge off the global cooldown.
2. Make Warbringer useable in Defensive Stance.
3. Make Warrior tanking less clunky, and easier to perform in general.
I love my Warrior, I love tanking, but so far in Wrath Protection Warriors don't bring utility to raids, we simply cannot tank larger numbers of mobs *equally*, and we do less threat on single targets than Druids/Paladins, and we don't scale as well. It takes a higher level of skill to master Warrior tanking than other classes, and it requires far more effort, leaving most Warriors unwilling or hesitant to do that which we enjoy - tanking.
So what've you got for us besides "more dps"?
Suggestions/Feedback re specific talents:
Critical Block - How about turning this into a "Defend"-esque ability similar to that Footmen had in Warcraft 3? Slow down your movement speed, but return damage dealt for a period of time?
Sword and Board - Screw making our rotations more needlessly complicated. What's wrong with providing an instantly performed Shield Slam when it procs?
Can all Warriors get some form of "Inner Rage" back again?
Ghost,
I really do appreciate the attention Warriors in general are getting, but I think there's a serious question that still hasn't been answered. When does tanking with a Warrior get any easier? Is that a goal that you and the other developers are trying to meet?
Engaging in an instance is supposed to be fun and challenging, but for most tanks, it's mostly all challenging, and not much fun having to pay attention to rage management, general threat, the _complete locking down of all our global cooldowns_, and the number of buttons we have to press quickly in order to tank at a level that's seen as below other tank classes.
To use an example: This past weekend I did Karazhan with a protection paladin who tanked the entire instance by himself sans Netherspite, and pulled every single pack and tanked it with minimal effort. Move into mobs, use Avenging Wrath, and Consecrate. That's it. I've done the same feat before as a Warrior, and it went slower and required a lot more effort from the healers and DPS to not pull threat and to make sure they were assisting on the same target.
Granted that tanking larger numbers of mobs is seen as a Paladin niche, and Warriors are capable of doing it, but the amount of effort needed to tank large packs is *not fun*. It's not fun tabbing to each individual mob to throw up Devastates, it's not fun having to hedge guesses on which mob might break free so you'd better be ready to taunt it, and it's not fun having to manage rage to a T.
How does Warbringer make things more fun or easy? Having to swap into Battle Stance and back to Defensive Stance has you lose rage from the Charge itself and the auto attack. More keyclicks are not fun. Worrying about wasting rage isn't fun. Mechanic game-wise, it's superior to Intercept a mob and stun it for three seconds, ensuring that your character will reach the mob in time to taunt it, lets you use Berserker Rage to help your rage generation, instead of Charging a mob, only to have it be _out of range_ of your character by the time it actually arrives at it, and potentially losing more Rage than gaining it?
Another major complaint of mine is the way that the optimal warrior threat rotation is set up - it still is, and it's going to remain Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate. Even with Sword and Board changing things up, it's not even very effective given our ability rotation. Shield Slam cools down in six seconds, and now that Sword and Board no longer procs off Shield Slam, all that Sword and Board does is make Shield Slam rage-free (which is good), but it halves the second benefit, which is Shield Slam being refreshed.
The rotation is stagnant, not fun, and leaves the tanking Warrior pretty much completely GCD locked down, making it incredibly annoying to fit in anything else you might need: A shout, Shield Wall, or Thunder Clap. In order to maintain a high amount of threat, Warriors are still going to have to spam the same four keys over repeatedly. AE tanking for Warriors is going to be absolutely incomparable compared to Paladins/Druids/DKs if Warriors don't have Shockwave.
Vigilance, our newest tool, is not going to magically make people choose Warriors over other tanks. It takes a lot more effort from both the Warrior and his/her group for a Warrior to be effective tanks. Warriors cannot build threat without being hit for Rage, Warriors need to build up to their highest levels of threat, Warriors who go through avoidance strings are going to see their threat drop dramatically. Warriors can't tank mobs effectively without a certain amount of rage incoming - Ferals get extra Rage from critting, Paladins start pulls/encounters with a full "Rage" bar that's replenished via effective healing, DKs refresh runes every 10 seconds and generate Runic Power from using Runic abilities. Warriors need to wait, pick, and choose.
Here's a common example of what very commonly happens to new Warriors who try to tank:
Warrior engages pull with zero rage. Begins taking damage. DPS starts on whatever target is closest. Many DPS classes don't bother paying attention and each DPS class is attacking his/her own mob. Healer finishes a heal on Warrior to replenish damage - healer gets aggro from mobs. Likely the Warrior is tanking his or her one mob fine, is seeing the DPS taking damage, tries to taunt one back, healer pulls heal aggro, mob flies to the healer and is halfway over when the Warrior realizes this, and his/her taunt is down as well.
This seems kind of far-fetched, but I've seen it happen often enough while healing instances on alternate characters. Who hasn't seen a trigger happy healer seem to not understand that Warriors need time to get things going, and not to heal until threat has been built up?
What kind of reaction will a healer have to a Paladin that's able to Consecrate and keep aggro, or a Druid? "Oh, well I had a much easier time not dying when a Paladin/Druid tanked compared to a Warrior".
Suggestions:
1. Take abilities like Shout, Thunderclap, and Revenge off the global cooldown.
2. Make Warbringer useable in Defensive Stance.
3. Make Warrior tanking less clunky, and easier to perform in general.
I love my Warrior, I love tanking, but so far in Wrath Protection Warriors don't bring utility to raids, we simply cannot tank larger numbers of mobs *equally*, and we do less threat on single targets than Druids/Paladins, and we don't scale as well. It takes a higher level of skill to master Warrior tanking than other classes, and it requires far more effort, leaving most Warriors unwilling or hesitant to do that which we enjoy - tanking.
So what've you got for us besides "more dps"?
Suggestions/Feedback re specific talents:
Critical Block - How about turning this into a "Defend"-esque ability similar to that Footmen had in Warcraft 3? Slow down your movement speed, but return damage dealt for a period of time?
Sword and Board - Screw making our rotations more needlessly complicated. What's wrong with providing an instantly performed Shield Slam when it procs?
Can all Warriors get some form of "Inner Rage" back again?
Rioht
