MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Paladin Tanks

2008-09-19 05:45:23

With us being last in:

1) Health
2) Mitigation
3) Avoidance (well we are maybe slightly above druids here)

Will being a "good player" or having "good gear" be enough for us to compete for MT jobs? I suspect not. I can under stand us being last in one of the areas, but all of them??? This is spelling doom for our viability. Blizzard will have to design all the encounters ridiculously simple and easy for a paladin to be able to tank them ><

Get use to being a trash tank. Its not going to change if things stay as-is.

Tannith

2008-09-19 13:48:29

Re: Paladin Tanks - The "fat kid" of MTs

I've posted this a couple of times, but the last time I looked a the numbers, paladin and warrior health were within 2% of each other and armor was within 1% of each other. Warriors had slightly higher avoidance, while paladins had higher block value. Damage reduction was about the same.

Of course, things could have changed since we last looked at the numbers. But if those relationships stand, it's going to come down to things like mana vs. rage starvation, proc talents, the effect of buffs and similar effects. But overall the indication is that they are pretty similar.

Ghostcrawler

2008-09-19 14:13:50

Re: Paladin Tanks - The "fat kid" of MTs

Spell Reflect is a nice ability, to be sure, but I'm not convinced it makes or breaks a lot of fights, except for a couple tailor-made to show off the ability.

Beyond Spell Reflect, the magic damage reduction is pretty similar between paladins and warriors in similar gear. Now, mostly what I'm talking about is theorycrafting (as ironic as that term sounds coming from us). We looked at all the numbers and tried to math out the outcomes. Real world testing can be very different and we might discover say that Critical Block provides a lot more protection than we imagine.

We also don't have a lot of numbers on threat yet. Early indications are that druids, warriors and paladins have no trouble holding aggro most of the time. DKs may be a little low, but that's probably because their damage is a little low, so that will correct itself. All tanks should scale a lot better with regard to threat, so we shouldn't have the situation were bears outstripped warriors and paladins would have outstripped both if they had been able to find upgrades to their gear.

It's certainly not an easy thing to balance overall, but so far it seems to be going okay.

Ghostcrawler

2008-09-21 22:13:06

Re: Paladin Tanks - The "fat kid" of MTs

This thread has strayed into lots of different places. I will point out however that if you visit the warrior forums, they are equally convinced that the math does not work in their favor. Perhaps we should have started a tanking forum where people could try to build more of a consensus instead of throwing grenades at each other from one class forum to another. :)

We could build the paladin and warrior exactly the same way. Same stats. Same talents, maybe moved around a little bit. Very similar abilities to generate threat and mitigate damage. Some people would argue we've moved too close to that model already.

But we do want to avoid the classes feeling too similar to each other, so as hard as it may be to do, we're committed to having 4 tanking classes and making them as different as possible while still letting them do the job. If the threshold is 1%, if all stats truly have to be within 1% of each other or else one class or the other gets set out on the curb, then the classes will have to move very, very close to each other. But I don't believe that is actually the threshold. Druids and paladins tanked many bosses in BC and did it fine, even though most players would argue warriors were the best end-game raiding tank. Without crushing blows and similar mechanics, they should only be better.

The most helpful posts in threads like this are the ones that provide specific numbers and under what circumstances you think protadins fall short so we can double-check our numbers. The least useful ones usually have the words "it's not fair" somewhere in the first sentence or two.

Ghostcrawler

2008-09-21 22:34:57

Re: Paladin Tanks - The "fat kid" of MTs

Q u o t e:
The removal of crushing blows does not work in our favor, GC. We were the only tank capable of removing them reliably from the combat table. Just a small point, but an important one, nonetheless.

Totally. But it was a nightmare to gear for, and warriors were still thought of as better at crushing blows up until the very end because of the Shield Block mechanic. Druids just got crushed and tried not to bleed too much.

If I see paladins tanking Malygos and KT and that not being so unusual that it goes on You Tube, then I'll be happy... and then I'll start worrying about Ulduar. (Which makes it sound like we don't consider any scaling factors beyond current gear level, which isn't true, but you get my drift.)

Ghostcrawler