Threat Decay and the end of the world
Rhidach is on vacation. This week’s guest posts brought to you by Anafielle!
The Cataclysm news continues. GC posted a few times recently on threat generation, tricks & MD, and the possible introduction of a threat decay. Check out the whole string of blue posts – they’re all worth a read.
On threat, one of the changes we’re considering trying out is to have threat decay pretty rapidly. The idea is that a tank should never be able to get so far ahead on threat that they can AFK for the rest of the fight. It might sound like a nerf, but really the intent is to make sure that the tank’s job is never done — that what you do will remain important. [...] The tuning wouldn’t be such that if you missed a couple of swings that the warlocks would pull aggro. The feeling would be more that you have to still make decisions with regard to threat generation throughout the fight.
Furthermore, we are exploring the threat generation of Misdirect and Tricks of the Trade being temporary. That way it would still be useful for initial pulls or when adds join the fray, but wouldn’t be a crutch to keep tank threat consistently high throughout a fight. (Source)
OK, guys, let’s calm down and take a look at this. Ghostcrawler is basically pointing out two undeniable truths of raid tanking and threat generation today:
- Tricks and MD are capable of (mostly) replacing the threat of a disconnected / debuffed / AFK tank.
- Threat generation near the middle and end of some fights becomes easymode due to a huge threat lead. This is especially obvious if the DPS target switches a lot, or if you are being consistently tricks’d.
I’m not sure how you can disagree on either of these points if you’re a tank with omen installed.
Threat problem? What threat problem?
Case in point: Deathwhisper HM Phase 3.
If you’ve ever seen her solo tanked, you have witnessed something that (in my opinion) should not be possible. The tank in this strat is producing zero threat thanks to Touch of Insignificance. 100% of his threat generation comes from rogue tricks and hunter MDs. Solo tanking DW is one of the weirdest feelings I’ve ever had – you’re basically a meat shield with zero threat generation. A non combat pet with 60k HP could do your job. Huh. Sounds like fun.
This Deathwhisper strat made me think very, very hard about how much my threat generation matters on other fights where I’m being tricksed AND producing threat.
What are you talking about? There’s no threat problem.
I’ve rarely seen a raid get threat capped by the MT. Does this happen more in more progressed guilds? I don’t play in a top 100 world raiding guild, but I do play in a guild that’s a solid 7/12 ICC 25 hard modes. Our DPS are no slouches, but with correct threat management they stay below the MT without much trouble at all.
Can you remember a lot of fights recently where you ended up miles ahead on omen? Does your threat generation still matter at the end of a fight? Could you stop doing your rotation for a while and still hold threat? There are fights where that answer, for me, is yes.
The last major meaningful threat decision I made near the end of a fight was to hit Holy Shield and then pick up my nice cold beer. You know I wasn’t producing any threat because I had to take my face off the keyboard to drink. Mmm, Magic Hat #9 – an excellent decision.
Wait for 5 sunders and then DPS the boss!
I think GC was pretty clear about the problem he’s trying to solve. He is NOT talking about making establishing threat more difficult or painful. He is NOT talking about short term threat. He’s talking about eliminating a very, very specific problem – huge threat leads which emerge on a lengthy fight.
Having a slow threat decay makes sure that your job is never done — that you can’t get so far ahead of everyone that hitting Shield Slam at the right time becomes irrelevant for the rest of the fight. If you are already an awesome tank you probably won’t notice a difference. [...] You won’t suddenly notice a massive drop because “decay kicked in.” But you’ll never be able to get so far ahead of everyone else that there is no possibility of them catching up even if you do nothing. (source)
I think it would be really interesting to have to work to keep threat on the boss after the DPS has switched off for a while and switched back on. A small threat decay would work this in nicely without affecting our threat generation in any other way. I like the idea. (Commence the stoning!)
To be honest, I’m more interested to see what they do to Tricks / MD. I think that they’re the larger problem right now.
Anyways, it’s a blue post about a mechanic they haven’t even put in the Cataclysm beta yet. Take it with a grain of salt.
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The only way this would matter for current tanks is in the case where you do in fact quit doing anything. I have certainly seen the kinds of generous threat leads you spoke of, but I still roll my face with the same vigor as if the fight just started.
Adding in threat decay won’t matter if tricks and MD are left the same because the DPS would be seeing the same level of threat decay. I’d see a better solution being to give tricks and MD diminishing returns. Make it so that the more times you use MD and tricks to transfer your threat on a particular mob, the less threat they actually transfer. This way on fights where it is an important tool due to new adds spawning, etc, those tools are unaffected. However, on LDW hardmode you would not be able to keep aggro on a tank generating 0% threat for long.
I like this idea! I’m 4912gs tank in icc 10m reg and we have some upper 5k gs dps that run with us that don’t get clkse to out threating me even if i ease up on my rotation. I absolutely welcome a little extra challenge
Where I think a lot of the worries are coming from is that it was only Paladins that were truly hitting that afk stage of threat. They’re nerfing Paladin threat and they’re removing threat on MD and Tricks.
So, we’re looking at them putting threat decay into a world that’s already unable to afk a keep threat. Which is why most are either reacting to this idea by either: panicing or just stating it’s not going live.
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@Anafielle
6 July 2010 at 11:03 am #
I don’t really accept the argument that it’s just a paladin problem.
Haven’t you ever seen your threat lead be insurmountable after the whole raid switches to an add? If you’re a warrior tanking Taldaram on Blood Princes, your threat generation halfway through the fight is just as inconsequential as mine.
I’m pretty sure they won’t “break threat” for everyone. They’re just thinking about it. They’ve thought about crazier things.
I think we should probably change the way we think of threat. Let’s not think of it as a “decay”, because that implies that your current threat will hurt.
Threat with a decay would instead be a more immediate stat. It would be relevant only to the last 30 seconds of the fight, not the whole fight.
I think that’s a fascinating change of perspective and it has absolutely nothing to do with which class of tank you play….
Although I’m coming at this as a paladin, so, /shrug
This is going to make watching our OTs threat a real pain in the ass if they’re going to be able to more easily spike past us in a situation like Marrowgar, where you may lose threat on the boss as it moves and again when you try to position it.
I think this is a crappy solution as it forces us to only build threat and ignore any group utility we can provide. If we have to watch our threat that closely, we’re going to go back to TBC tunnel vision of just building threat and staying alive. They’re already taking away Cleanse, so maybe that’s all they want us focused on.
@Anafielle
6 July 2010 at 11:34 am #
I think the idea is that threat across the board decays, not MT threat alone.
They are looking at a change in how threat (in general) works – not trying to nerf overpowered tank threat generation.
I think…
The problem is that scenarios like Marrowgar the ranged DPS don’t need to stop threat significantly. It seems more like Blizzard is trying to solve a problem that shouldn’t exist… threat is not meaningful.
Tank TPS is based around DPS*Threat Mod + Static, if we assume static threat is going away largely (a good idea since it scales badly) then we just need to make threat meaningful by keeping tank DPS competitive (50% or so of the DPS – so a 2x threat modifier). If we can’t significantly out threat the DPS, then threat is always meaningful, making it decay becomes unnecessary.
@Orthien
6 July 2010 at 3:55 pm #
First off I wanna say your doing a great job Anafielle, these are very well writen posts.
Secondly I think you are 100% correct here, granted I play a Paladin but from what I have seen of most tanks recently any fight that has adds has this threat lead. There are some fights where this is not the case but for the majority of ICC I feel more than safe going afk to get a drink or deal with a cat etc.
Something has to be done with threat as it is now, I dont want to be capping DPS like could happen in BC but I don’t want a free ride either.
Orthien’s last blog ..Long Catch Up
Nice post.
currently I only see threat issues when I compete with other tank with me in raid (warr).
and these days since they buffed warr threat it is quite chalenging to stay ahead of him (HoS is nice here :-)
I run 10 mans only and usually with only hunter which dont MD, so what I can say is that if u have much better geared dpsers than you, you have to keep rotation up.
yea again only coming from a paladin tank perspective but this has been an issue since naxx opened. If i come out guns blazing on a boss thats yank and spank i can have an unreachable threat ceiling long before the boss hits 50%. It shouldnt be that way and doesnt make for very engaging gameplay.
I like that this is happening, it’s a change that will make our job engaging. This has nothing to do with classes, or wanting to make us tunnel vision. A DK will out-threat a dps just as easy as a paladin, so will a warrior, or a druid. Yes we have to focus on threat more with this, but do you really want things to stay the way they are, not having to worry about threat?
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The only thing that worries me at all is that if it isn’t balanced well, you lose any opportunity for utility GCDs.
Or, worse, Druids and DKs might (hypothetically) lose any opportunity for utility GCDs, but warriors and paladins being hypothetically higher on threat output can still do it.
That said, I can’t speak for all top100 guilds, but threat is certainly a non-issue in mine, without relying on “Tricks/MD on cooldown” antics.
@Anafielle
7 July 2010 at 10:18 am #
Yeah, I definitely see that as a concern, but it heartens me that GC said they didn’t want to overtune it.
Hopefully they will find a balance – threat shouldn’t be so painful that we fear sacrificing a global cooldown for those raid utility tools, but it should be important enough to reward a solid rotation from start to finish.
It’s a bit concerning for us tbh. The two tanks in my group (me being one) really only play wow twice a week on our mains whilst a bunch of our dps indulge in 25s gettin shadowmournes and the rest. We also don’t have a rogue or hunter and then we also wear frost resist gear for fights like sindy hm. For sindy especially we can really struggle with threat through the first phase. Bear in mind we have five pallies which means five salva
@AvengingWrathy
8 July 2010 at 3:21 am #
Threat is not so much of an issue most of the time especially with the 25% buff’ however if i am in my armor set on blood queen hard mode, I have threat issues as a result of gear.
I don’t think that the decay will be so much that a talented tank will lose threat if they use a utility gcd. I think that you may have to get right back to your rotation or someone riding your threat will pull, but for the most part there will be wiggle room. I think it will feel more like the first 30 seconds of a fight with out tricks.
@Rilgon
12 July 2010 at 12:59 pm #
I want to know where this fairy-tale land of tanks who can out-threat high-threat DPS while AFK are. I might actually not hear the Omen high-threat warning constantly in a raid for once if I found it.
Even WITH MD and FD, I constantly ride the bloody edge of my tanks’ threat generation. Let’s not even get into how buggy MD can be (it casts and goes on cooldown but doesn’t transfer threat) or how bullshit it is that Feign Death has a 10% failure rate (17% Spell Miss – 6%-ish Spell Hit on my gear – 1% Draenei racial = hahaha fuck).
Rilgon Arcsinh’s last blog ..A New Hope
@Rhidach
12 July 2010 at 1:31 pm #
What kind of tanks are you working with? Are they hit capped themselves? Do they use slow weapons or something like crappy dual Rimefangs? There’s a lot of variables, but provided that you don’t open up with a 30k crit, a tank should be able to hold threat off of you. I’d be really interested seeing armories if any of these poor-threat tanks you’re dealing with are Paladins. I bet they’re doing something wrong.
@Anafielle
12 July 2010 at 2:09 pm #
Your DPS/threat and the DPS you work with is way beyond anything I’ve had to deal with. I can only speak from experience here.
It’s not like I’ve ever lost threat – I have – embarrassingly enough. But in ideal conditions, the tank will pull ahead of the DPS (rhi does). In ideal conditions plus tricks, the tank will pull so far ahead that he can’t be caught.
Anyways, the threat “nerf” won’t make threat harder at any given time or make you more likely to pull off someone. What it will (might?) do is make threat something that is only relevant for a brief period of time instead of something that builds up over the course of the fight.
Meh, if you actually tank the whole fight like you enjoy your job. You wont have a problem now or in the future. No worries.