#362 - March 19, 2010, 1:16 a.m.
Q u o t e:
I generally tend to agree with most things you say - but, this one is sort of viewing the same thing that happens with every other class, too. Rogues have to keep slice and dice up all the time, and you balance assuming they do... Why not make it permanent. DK's are balanced assuming their diseases are up all the time... Why not just make them apply on auto swing? The same sort of argument used for why Warriors shouldn't have to press shield block could, realistically, apply to every other effect in the game. "We balance around assuming you're going to push Fireball every time Brain Freeze procs". Why not make it work like lightning overload, then?
It's just a matter of degree. Slice and Dice isn't too bad used as every other finisher or so (though even then it's such a game-changer that having it fall off is devastating). Slice and Dice as something you had to do every other attack would be masochistic (and yeah, Hunger for Blood might be close).
Brain Freeze doesn't proc all that often to where you're literally doing Frost Bolt / Fireball / Frost Bolt / Fireball.
Really though one of the biggest differences is the role. If dps specs don't have some kind of rotation or priority system, they become boring to play. With tanks and healers, they have a lot going on in addition to using their abilities. We do ask dps specs to sometimes do really important things in a raid, and they often have to move out of the fire or whatever, but then again, so do the healers and tanks.
I'm not saying tanks shouldn't be hitting buttons often. They need to in order to be fun. But there are two extremes that both sort of suck. One is you have to hit a button constantly that has very little depth to the decision. The other is that you never want to push the button because you're saving it. Cooldown plays into this a lot. On a 15 sec cooldown, any time you're saving the ability, you're probably wasting it. On a 60 min cooldown, any time you use the ability you feel like you're wasting it. Somewhere in the 2-3 minute timeframe you can feel like it's okay to use the abilities often, but you can also hold them on occasion for those scary periods where the boss is bursting damage on you or the healers are repositioning or whatever.
I don't think we're horribly off with the cooldowns today, but I think we are off.
Q u o t e:
Pushing shield block every 5 seconds to increases your tanking to an ability that you're balanced around is no different than pushing Shield Slam every 5 seconds to increase your threat generation because you're balanced around it. The only difference is that one is an ability used by a tank to increase your tanking ability, and the other is used by a tank to increase your DPS/Threat generation.
I think they are different though. You are probably not going to die from failing to push Shield Slam, except possibly to a raid wipe very early on the pull when threat is dicey and healers or casters get creamed (and today, even that is unlikely.) The other problem is the resource issue I mentioned before. Back in BC (especially early), warriors had to prioritize rage a little more. If you hit Heroic Strike so much that you lacked rage for a Shield Slam (or a Shield Block), then you were doing it wrong. In today's environment, many Prot warriors might as well take the rage bar off their screen. (Caveat: This does not mean being eternally rage starved is fun. It just means that choosing which ability to use is more fun than hitting them on cooldown.)
To go back to a few discussions on this forum lately, you (and I mean y'all plural, not Devium specifically because he gets into that a little in his post) have to ask yourself what you like about being a tank. For some players, they just like getting the attention and if being a tank is trivial, no biggy. Others like to have some kind of challenge, whether that means competing for threat, staying alive, positioning the mob, or all of the above. To have a challenge then there needs to be some penalty (even a small one) for making the wrong decision. The potential to screw up needs to exist. For a rogue that might be letting SnD fall off. For a priest that might be using Guardian Spirit when you didn't need it (or ideally running OOM by overhealing way too much.) For a warrior it might be not using Shield Wall when you needed to use it, but I'm not sure those decisions roll around often enough.
Edit for some confusing sentences.