Mastery for tanks - Blue Tracker

#0 - March 9, 2010, 10:10 p.m.

From the cataclysm thread: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23710210871&sid=1 I thought it probably deserved its own thread:

Q u o t e:

2) Ferals will have passive bonuses that say Cat: melee damage done, Bear: damage reduction. For death knights we have a different plan in mind that we’re not quite ready to discuss. DKs are undergoing some slight changes so they aren’t so GCD constrained and are less limited by rune cooldowns.

This sounds like they're cementing the niche that DKs have as the cooldown tank, and the other prot specs are all going to have damage taken masteries in one form or another.

I predict problems.

Ghostcrawler

#34 - March 10, 2010, 8:23 p.m.

Stamina is always going to be valuable for tanks, so I'm not sure a strategy of trying to force tanks to gem / enchant other stats is ever going to feel good. That said, tanks used to worry more about being the mana sponge. The way to alleviate being the mana sponge is to take less damage and a great way to take less damage is to dodge more.

The relative value of dodge vs. parry is something we'll have to play with. My gut reaction is that parry needs to be cheaper since avoiding 100% of one hit is more valuable than avoiding 50% of two hits, but I'm not sure how much cheaper. Avoiding spikiness (which dodge will contribute to) also has value, and if the second hit after a parry is dodged instead (such that you lose the parry "charge") that plays into the cost as well.

The passive talent tree bonuses for tanks will probably be something like 1) reduces damage taken, 2) increases damage done, 3) reduces damage taken in a way unique to your tree.

Yes, we're still dodging the DK question. For now. :)

Ghostcrawler

#108 - March 11, 2010, 6:06 p.m.

Q u o t e:
You guys are pretty much forcing tanks to gem for stam by reducing the amount of stam on gear and expecting us to make it up with stam gems. The part that worries me is the boring factor; gems are supposed to be something that gives players options and forcing us to gem for stam by design doesn't really give us an option.

I'm not sure I buy that logic. If tanking gear had thousands and thousands of Stam, tanks would still socket Stamina because it's reliable. If your health is low, then even if your avoidance is 99% that means sometimes you're just going to die and no healer can save you. Now, if healers can generally heal you through damage but then eventually gas out, then avoidance becomes more attractive because it lets healers heal you longer. Does that mean you gem it? Not sure, but at least a trinket with all avoidance might be pretty exciting.

We also think we figured out a budgeting scheme to let tank gear have the same basic Stamina as dps gear. It's not a huge balance concern either way, but it does look weird when dps plate has more.

As for parry vs. dodge, there are just going to be a lot of debates both within our office and on all of the boards about how it should ideally work and the relative value of each. Those conversations are going to go on a long time and not the kind of thing that can easily be summed up in a pithy GC post.