Our AoE tanking to get a nerf?
Recently, Ghostcrawler had this to say in a threat about warrior complaints:
Long-term, the paladin manner of generating AE damage and threat is probably too good, especially given how simple it is. To be honest, we have very mixed feelings on the whole AE tanking game. We brought the druid and warrior more in line with the paladin for fear of recreating the Shattered Halls / Mount Hyjal experience, where other tanks just weren’t competitive. What that has led to of course is the AE tank + AE style of damage for almost every pull. You need the tools to be able to tank legitimate adds fights (imagine lots of incoming mobs), but does that mean every pull needs to devolve into that? We’d like to see less AE overall, so buffing everyone’s AE tools isn’t going to be tops on our agenda. That does however mean that we really can’t afford to have a “best AE tank”, and while things are more fair there than they were in BC, they aren’t fair enough.
I don’t think this means we’re going to get nerfed any time soon. I’ll explain why.
Here’s the problem with decrying the OPness of Paladin AoE: the sample is wrong. You can’t wait us tank the mobs before Marrowgar and assume that that’s the rule rather than the exception.
In that room I get to use Holy Wrath and benefit from additional damage multipliers from Glyph of Sense Undead and Crusade. On top of Seal of Command cleaving like nuts, of course our AoE damage is going to be ridiculous. It’s a fait accompli.
Line us up in a room full of evil monkeys or some mob type other than Undead/Demon and you’re going to see a different picture of Pally tanking.
Also, the fact can’t be ignored that Paladins were initially designed to be the best AoE tank, because generally that’s all we could do in Burning Crusade. Only in Wrath was it decided to bring other tanks up to our level, but not to concurrently re-evaluate Pally AoE prowess against the other tank classes. A classic oversight by Blizz.
My point being, Paladin AoE is only “overpowered” due to the situations we’re being observed tanking in. I posit we’d be much less effective in a dungeon crammed with non-Undead/Demon mobs. Still the best AoEer, sure, but not some godly tank that could hold a sweeping horde against all comers.
And every time Consecrate is assumed to be the end-all, be-all of our AoE arsenal I have to chuckle. This isn’t TBC, CC doesn’t stand for Constant Consecration anymore. We can’t just drop that golden puddle and make all the mobs stick to us like glue. What makes us such amazing AoE tanks are all the tools at our disposal: HotR, Seal of Command, Holy Wrath, Holy Shield, Retribution Aura, and Consecrate.
Now as to the reason behind GC’s aside regarding our tanking style, he’s probably foreshadowing a design decision that’ll come to bear in Cataclysm. They’re probably going to move away from raids at least, and maybe heroics, being complete AoE fests. Maybe with 75% AoE damage reductions across the board like Blessing of Kings suggested.
I wouldn’t worry about a nerf any time soon. Between the piddling warrior buffs (I use the term lightly) and the reluctance to fix DK survivability, GC has demonstrated time and time again they’re happy to leave tanks as is as long as that mythical “replacement” situation doesn’t occur.
AoE tanking is just another ball kicked down the road.
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@honorshammer
26 January 2010 at 2:36 pm #
I hope you are right.
“My point being, Paladin AoE is only “overpowered” due to the situations we’re being observed tanking in.”
And rogues got a 7% nerf because Blizzard made two stand-still and kill fights in a row with Saurfang an Festergut…Blizzard has a funny way of just creating an instance with almost no thought to how the classes will balance while fighting in them, and then adjusting the classes based on those situations.
@Rhidach
26 January 2010 at 3:16 pm #
Yeah! No kidding, that’s an excellent point. They like to line up the pins and then get mad when you knock them down.
I don’t think the point is that we knock the pins down. It is that we don’t knock them down the way they want them knocked down. To us we just find the best most efficient way possible.
To them it was a “that was not intended we need to fix this problem.”
We had 2 raid instances built around undead mobs this expac. That is not the fault of the player. Paladins are built around being able to lay the smackdown on the undead. That is not the fault of the player. The next expac will likely see few if any undead style raiding. Players will find new ways to do things Blizzard did not intend. They will continue to think the game is broken, and another class will get the kind of nerfing and buffing Paladins saw this expansion pack.
My money is on the druids, but I can’t say that for sure, (underwater fights possibly). It might be the warriors. I don’t think it will be the DK’s, but one never knows these things until players get into the raid and break stuff, both gamewise and mechanics wise. I also don’t think paladins will be on top in the next expansion pack. But that’s more like an opinion.
Arkaneena’s last blog ..Ark Taunting
I read the BoK post and now yours and I’m puzzled by the absence of our captain america shield in your mention of AoE abilities. It is no different than HotR in the AoE repsect as far as I’m concerned. If I have a trash pack that I know will survive the CD I’ll pop it again once its off CD from the initial pull (provided that’s what I used).
Avenger’s Shield = HotR = AoEdelight
Also, I consider us particularly crippled in strict single target fights. If for some reason I’m in a fight where it is NOT ok to AoE, my DPS takes a huge hit.
The problem would be solved if bears and warriors had something shiny to drop on the floor. Swipe and T-clap can do just as well holding big groups, but I suspect many of these classes want something they can just put on the floor and tell dps/healers to stand in…
I have been taking my AoE up a bit of a notch. I picked up a second Neverending Winter shield last week and threw a titanium shield spike on it to go with everything else. I’ll take what I can get while I can get it and the fact that in most of these cases our dmg is just helping to kill things too quickly and it’s with that blizzard does not agree.
Look to those we out dps in a heroic saying it’s not fair that we out dps them when we start pulling 3-4 upwards of 6 packs of mobs onto us and consecrate. I’m 100% dps right out of the gate.. that’s not my fault that blizzard programmed a paladin to function that way and we just rolled with it.
Pally tanks are great at generating AoE threats. But any tanks worth the salt can do that. Pally makes it easier. The point is the encounter nature of the the instance. It is not the pally’s fault if you put mobs into group. It is not the pally’s fault if the dpser only know how to AoE and every button they push is AoE because it is convenient. It may not even be dps efficient but just one-button spamming convenient. Even if you put a skull on the kill target, they will still AoE with what every ability they have and let the skull die last. Did GC every find out why other tanking class needs to bump up their AoE threats or its just compains from the prot warriors/feral drools or lazy dpsers?
Another is the instance design, if the design is to space the melees and casters apart, there is no way to AoE, especially if you have not walls to LoS. I realise one such instance is the trash pull in Wailing Caverns. All i can say is that, the instance design may have encourage AoE tanking and dpsing.
btw since I am at LoS pulls. This is a funny incident i experience. This is what i pick up when tanking as a lowbie in BFD, I was LoSing pull along the structures before the boss. A dps asked where did I learn LoS pull? Another quickly quip in saying its from ICC. I told them nope not there, he quickly replied saying its from PoS. I didn’t bother to explain or i didn’t even know how to explain… LoS pulls has always been there since classic time. I guess they must have been new WOTLK mains doing alts.
The thing about this expansion thus far is that the trash has prettty much come in two varieties. Naxx and ICC have zergable undead trash that comes in pulls that can only rightly be described “Frothing Hordes”. The other style was the Ulduar trash, that pretty much either required a 1 to 1 tank to mob ratio, such as Ignis and pre keeper trash, or fairly heavy CC on Vezax Trash. There’s only a couple instances of non undead zergable trash. The most prominant example is freya flower packs. Is there any self respecting tank of any class out there who claims that the class they play can’t handle freya flower trash due to mechanics?
The Renaissance Man’s last blog ..Blood and Glory in the Crimson Halls.
I totally concur with today’s post.
btw, I still can’t stand GC’s “replacement” philosophy.
The number of players playing a class has nothing to do with it being overpowered or underpowered.
Hrm…I agree with the previous poster that said bears and warriors could use some kind of visual effect for their AoEs. Besides being boring as hell for me to tank on my bear, there’s no good visual indicator of what your swipe is doing. I’d imagine warriors feel the same way. The only downside is there is almost too much AoE visual effects happening now that you can barely see what’s happening around multi-mob pulls.
I have a similar complaint tanking on my DK. I wish there was better opening options on multi-mob trash. As a DK there’s no good visual or audible indicator that you’re really pissing off your multi-targets, besides DnD, and that sometimes isn’t enough to keep mobs glued to you in trigger-happy PuGs.
My predication for tanks in the next xpac is that all 4 tanks are more generic, but warriors or bears will be slightly better off. I say we enjoy our time in the sun now, things are probably going to get more tedious.
Paladins are usually played by simplistic idiots with no idea of what tanking really is, so you better not nerf thier aoe or they may cry. Did I mention Most of the developers play Paladins. ;)
@Rhidach
28 January 2010 at 3:26 pm #
You know it, mate. Mind if I use your shoulder? Although it might be too busy helping prop up that mighty intellect of yours.
Winking emoticon.
“Paladins are usually played by simplistic idiots with no idea of what tanking really is, so you better not nerf thier aoe or they may cry. Did I mention Most of the developers play Paladins. ;) ”
Cue in the thousands of pages of warrior posts on the official forums where their tears flow like rivers as they complain that other tanks have it easy and they don’t have the tools to get the job done. Now get back to slowing your raid down on trash ;)
Lol u guys make me laugh. Your too easy, just like your class ;)
@Rhidach
29 January 2010 at 10:30 am #
Our too easy what? I don’t get it.
I’m sure you’re a fantastic tank, and it’s a total injustice that we terk yer jerb. Totally not because you’re probably twelve and a moron. Keep on truckin’ Sparky.
I wish I could resist responding to the trolls. It sounded like DK said…
“You paladins don’t tank right, and the other kids are still picking you over me. It’s just not fair. Mom and Dad always liked you best. WAAAAAH!”
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Many combat rotations can have a huge chunk placed into macro form across a couple of buttons (people are really disgusted that it’s possible to combine two casts onto one button and three onto another button?). Much the same way, anyone can sit in the pilot’s seat when the plane’s on autopilot. Being smart enough to tell when something’s going astray, and what to do about it, is another matter entirely. Perhaps the problem is that there are some encounters where the paladin is performing better than somoene’s favored character. No tanking class is going to be dominant in all phases, but each tanking class has the ability to be competent in all phases.
Let us not forget that a lot of the good paladins today are players that tanked with their paladin against all odds when everything said it would be nearly impossible..
In a time where the word “tank” was connected with “warrior” and all bad tanks where warriors because there was no other tanking class.
Someone who is in the tanking business for just a few months (perhaps DK, I do not know and I will not judge) may misinterpret the term “tanking” for holding aggro of a few mobs.
Well.. thats perhaps 5% of whats really important..
Multiply that with the percentage of bossfights in icc and pdk and ulduar where aoe aggro at least partially matters and you get the importance of the issue.
so… 1/20 times 6/26 should be 1.15%
Well. What a crazy number. It is obvious that it is not very important.
(for reference the fights taken into account where: razorscale, mimiron, kologarn, thorim, Jaraxxus and the gunship battle)
When my healers complained that a paladin was easier to keep up than a DK on heavy melee fights like Algalon or Festergut on 3 inhales, I reminded the DKs to chain cooldowns when they see their health spiking downward and call for CDs if they need it from healers. Problem solved. I ran for ages alongside a Warrior tank and we had a really good competition in gear and survivability.
I’m also sick of warriors in my guild constantly whining about how bad warriors have it . One of them literally logs in and immediately starts complaining about his class. Or DKs who whine about ret paladins who “stole my BiS weapon.”
I just don’t get it. When tank gear drops I check it over with my other tank and will pass if the upgrade is better for him and a lot of my co-tanks do the same. Blah. Whatever. I usually just tell people my main was a bear tank that I raided with in TBC to shut them up when they tell me I play a face-roll class.
I’m sick of being poop’d on. That’s it, Internet Trolls.
/RighteousFury
/AvengingWrath
/Judgment
I think it comes down to slow and steady wins the race. Paladin and DK aoe is a psuedo set and forget and druids is a one button spam but all three apply a steady amount of damage to all mobs including new mobs just joining in. Warriors on the otherhand are gimped by cd’s. I love the burst of threat I can put out with a thunderclap… but if one or 2 mobs happened to be out of range or I missed them entirely then I am done applying threat to them till my cd comes up again. The other thing that warriors don’t have that others do is some sort of cd to apply a bunch of threat on demand. Pallies have avenging wrath and druids have beserk. Dk’s have empowered run weapon which may not be the greatest but is at least something.
Giving a warrior an ability that say refreshes the cd on thunderclap and shockwave on a 2 min cd would go a long way to balancing some of the issues warriors have on aoe threat.
What’s my main Again?’s last blog ..Big Blag Update
I don’t think the warrior and DK — to a lesser extent — communities will ever stop the whine train on the official forums until they are clearly the best tank in all situations. Nothing is going to make them stop short of being the best single target and AoE tank. Blizz will over-buff their AoE threat/DPS across the board and they will find something else to complain about. Blizz will accommodate them until all tank classes are the same and then warriors are going to quit in droves because it’s too easy and all the tanks are the same. That’s about what I see coming in the next xpac. Hope I’m wrong, but they are relentless in their bitching.
You guys make dumb look smart.
Ah, its just a troll.
Oh well, here you go :-)
*throws a trout in the air*
cmon catch it.
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yeah, good boy :-)
Nice Catch.