My battle regarding Vengeance continues! Part I was when I got up to ask the devs about it at Blizzcon, and Part II consists of this post from Meloree on the subject several weeks ago.
Well, here’s part III: Ghostcrawler Responds!
A very nice paladin player asked me recently about Vengeance. She had concerns about the mechanic, which made me realize that we haven’t done the best job of explaining to players exactly what Vengeance is supposed to accomplish……
Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1293873
Huh. Here’s my reply. I posted it here because the comments section murdered it and took out all the freakin’ paragraph breaks.
Missing The Mark
As (maybe) the tank referenced in this post – since I’m the one who berated the devs about Vengeance at Blizzcon – I’m pleased to see a response. :)
Unfortunately, it’s not the response we need.
For reference, please see Meloree’s post on the subject here: http://rhida.ch/2010/11/18/it-burns-how-i-learned-to-love-the-fire/ … he laid out the concerns better than I could, and from the perspective of a main tank in a US top 100 guild. I am an 11/12 HM 25 raider, and I and my cotank have noticed the same things although to a lesser extent. Problems are always clearer at the extremes.
I think you’ve missed our concerns a bit here.
Tanking Is Fun!
No need to be so defensive! We love tanking! Tanking has never been about the rotation. Tanking is about the role you play in the raid. If we think it’s fun, we tank. If we don’t, we don’t. I don’t think anyone is arguing that tanking isn’t fun — I certainly am not! I hope no one is doing that.
I guess we complain. Well, I will moan about boring 93939, and I will moan about Vengeance, because they are concerns and because the devs will listen. Also, because it’s part of the contract I signed when I became a paladin that I would QQ about everything. I’m required to QQ about something at length at least once a day.
The Need for Vengeance: We Agree!
I think you’re not giving the community enough credit. I like the idea of Vengeance and I agree with every reason why it should exist. I, at least, appreciate all the concerns raised by the devs, and I don’t need anyone to tell me why they think threat should be hard – I also liked the Misdirection / Tricks change, because I hated fake threat. I, at least, want it to be a challenge. Witness how the tanking community responded to the threat problem in this tier. We geared for threat on farm fights. We like the threat game.
The problem WITH Vengeance, is not that it exists, but how it works.
A stacking buff that is based on the damage we take has very un-tank-like implications.
Vengeance can contribute 150% of a tank’s natural AP. That’s a pretty absurd amount of threat generation dependent on your damage intake and avoidance. Unfortunately, higher avoidance = less Vengeance.
What this means: The first twenty seconds of a fight can look wildly, wildly different depending on if the tank gets an avoidance streak or not. For a ranked progression guild, this is enough of a problem to wipe it if the tank gets a bad avoidance streak at the start. Is this the spirit of Vengeance? No, I know, it’s not. Will it happen? Oh, yes, all the time. It’s already happening.
I don’t like my avoidance harming my threat generation. I don’t like standing in fire to do more threat. I don’t like being even more inclined to put on Strength gemmed gear, and ret gear, in old content – because it gets Vengeance stacked, and in WOTLK old content, I absolutely need it. Vengeance was supposed to solve this problem – taking off tank gear for old content – and instead it has made it worse.
I do appreciate the big numbers, though.
Not Seeing the Logic
I’m just not seeing the logic behind making Vengeance dependent on precisely what the tank is gearing to avoid. All this does is penalize tanks, threat wise, for doing tank like things, and reward us for doing un-tank-like things. Sure, this is an exaggeration… but that doesn’t make it any less true. I feel like the design is weird, and un-tank-like.
Even if the design is just The Way Things Are Meant To Be, the numbers right now are way off. 150% of a tank’s natural AP is far, far too high a number and makes for huge swings of RNG depending on how your avoidance works out.
Don’t get me wrong – I love the threat game. I love looking for a balance between threat and survivability. I love playing with my gear. But I don’t like my threat being inherently tied to my avoidance. I know in Cata, we won’t be seeing these ridiculous avoidance numbers, but the mechanic remains, and I still don’t like the logic.
A good response. Ghostcrawler has always been, if nothing else, very open to community feedback and being willing to go back to the drawing board for mechanics that aren’t working, so I’m optimistic that Vengeance will get the tweaks that it needs eventually. Perhaps in 4.1?
.-= Resonate’s last blog ..T-Minus 7 Days =-.
Thanks!!
Yeah… it’s so great to know that the devs will listen and will respond. GC is the best of them all. Love him or hate him, he spends a ridiculous amount of time responding to the community and talking to us about how things are working, and how they should work.
Anyone know if warriors, druids, and DKs are telling the same story? It’s one thing if paladin tanks complain about it, but a whole different story if all tanks are complaining.
To be honest, I don’t know.
I just know what the paladins are saying because we have an active blog community and the extremely intelligent forums at Maintankadin. But I haven’t even looked at what the rest are saying.
I’d be curious to think what Gravity over at gravityDK thinks. Maybe I should go poke around Tankspot too.
I don’t know about druids and DK’s, but warriors are basically in the same boat as paladins. Even with vigilance, warriors either have the threat or they don’t. And right now, we can reforge our avoidance down to 40% or so, and that means Vengeance doesnt fall off every 9 seconds.
All the feral druids I know are kitties and the 3 DK tanks I know have all but quit their toons.
I’d also point out that it runs counter to the healing model that Blizz seems to be going for in Cata, which is the tanks not taking tons of damage that will kill them in a couple of hits if not healed through.
So which is it? If eating enough damage to keep vengeance constantly rolling isn’t enough to kill us quickly, then the encounter could be cheesed by stacking avoidance and telling the DPS to throttle back. If it IS, then it’s back to frantic throughput healing. Or else vengeance is a much smaller contribution to threat and then largely irrelevant…
That is an excellent point. With smaller hits as a percentage of health, Vengeance won’t stack as quickly as it does now. And the rapid decay will assist in keeping it low.
Numbers game!
This is from the POV of a warrior who also plays a tankadin. (I hope this is ok posting it like this! I warned Ridach that it was a lil long >.<)
"The problem with Vengeance and why it might break tanking in 5 mans"
Vengeance was recently explained by Ghostcrawler and putting it simply, it’s there to make sure that the DPS never out-threat you as long as you are in comparative gear and doing what you are supposed to do. You gain the stacking buff by taking damage, and 5% of that damage is converted into AP, up to 10% of your total HP.
Sounds good right? Well it’s not, and here is why.
So what happens in 5 man content (lol-5mans, amiright???) when the tank is sporting a ton of armor (lets say over 65% reduction in dmg) and is pushing over 60% combined avoidance (dodge + parry) – basically in Tier 13 or higher. That’s the situation we are in right now, at the end of Wrath, and I don’t know about other tanks, but when I run around in 5 mans, I can barely get vengeance to stack right now because I take little to no damage (its either avoided entirely or mitigated to nothing) or because by the time it has a chance to stack up, the trash is dead and I’m plodding off to the next pull, or in my case, chaining charges and intercepts off of critters and whatever else I can find to get to the next pack of trash as fast as possible.
So what happens when we can’t really chain pull like that and at least some CC is required? That means vengeance will never be there for us when we will need it most.
And in no way am I saying that it should. What I’m talking about is in that 7th second, when the DPS are almost taking over in threat and we have either avoided or dodged everything so far, we need that vengeance stack. So why will we need it most?
Well, lets look at it like this: the DPS’ gear levels will continue to rise exponentially until they can no longer get gear (i.e. BIS). Tank’s however will not really be increasing their offensive stats that much unless they start chasing down DPS gear to wear in the heroics (which will happen more than likely); tanks ALWAYS focus on defensive stats first, and then they look at stuff like hit, expertise, and strength heavy items. So what happens in the 5 mans when the tank can’t stack vengeance to gain the AP buff to boost their threat? Tanks will hold threat, but only by the skin of their teeth, and even then, a slightly careless or overzealous DPS will peel mobs right off the tank.
So let the DPS die, right? That’s gonna be my stance in the new 5 mans, but that excuse wont float very well if we are always threat capping the DPS in 5 mans: tanks manage threat by trying to hit it as hard as they can; DPS manage threat by not hitting it all the time. L2watch Omen, right? Yes, but not always.
But the problem still remains: DPS will be threat capped, and that’s not fun for anyone involved. So what are some of the solutions?
- First solution, and most likely solution (it happens ALL the time in WoW): tanks replace tanking gear with DPS gear; gear heavy in str, crit, and haste. This used to be an option, but not an overly favorable one because DPS gear used to be lacking in the stamina department, but since the Cata revamp, stam is overly abundant on DPS items, to the point that some DPS pieces have more stam than the tanking pieces.
By stacking the DPS pieces, the tanks will increase their threat via stacking more offensive stats as well as lowering their defensive stats. This means that no matter what, they gain vengeance.
- Second solution, and in my humble opinion what Blizzard should have done in the first place, is bake in some kind of way to get vengeance stacks via mastery or via dodge/parries. Think about it, no matter what, you will be dodging and parrying attacks unless it’s a caster mob, but in most packs of trash, there is only 1, so it’s a slightly moot issue.
If you think about it though, no matter what, you will be gaining vengeance as long as you are being attacked, meaning that you are gaining that AP buff. In addition to making it easier to attain the buff and to stack it up, they need to make a way to make it easier to carry the AP buff from one fight to another, but not in a way that abuses PVP. I’m thinking something along the lines of what they already have, where it decays when you are not actively being hit, but a little bit better. I think that the buff should still decay, but only if you are not in combat, and at a slower rate, perhaps 5 seconds out of combat it starts to decay.
What this accomplishes is that avoidance streaks do not wipe your stacks out and moving from one pack of mobs to another does not mean that you are starting with your normal 5k AP you have when you are just chilling out in town; when you enter that fight, you have something to help you out.
Granted, I make it sound like Vengeance should be the end-all solution to bad tanking and that vengeance being maxed out is the only thing that is making tanks viable, because it’s not and I’m not trying to say that. Bad tanks will fail and either quit the game or reroll/respec. Good tanks will adapt, communicate, and survive. As the quote illustrates below, the Dev’s are aware that the mechanic is not perfect yet, and that they are willing to work on it to make it work the way it should, but with the way it’s currently working, I’m not sold yet. Granted, I’m probably looking at it from the point of view where there are 8 mobs I can easily reach and the other 4 people in the party start dropping all forms of AOE on the mobs before I have even thunder-clapped once… It’s not going to be like that in Cata(at least not right away), but I still think we should be able to carry the vengeance stacks from one pack to the next unless it’s an extremely long distance to travel (can’t walk there in less than 5 seconds).
And don’t worry about Vengeance doing that Greg, Wrath already beat it to the punch.
Wow! This deserves a blog of its own! I’m so glad to hear another point of view that is similar to mine.
I used to have a tanking-centric blog I tried to start up, but due to lack of hits and school time crunch, I couldn’t maintain it.
Before Veneretio closed up shop, I was one of the candidates as a co-writer/guest writer he had. :(
I hope you 2 (Rhidach and Anafielle) keep up the great posts, the warrior tanking community doesn’t really have much like you guys. :D
Apologies for the long post in advance!
Another thing that seems to get left out of this particular debate often that was touched on by Faid, is offtanking.
On fights that involve tank transitions your Vengeance stack drops to nearly nothing. The only real solution is if you’re a warrior able to put Vigilance on your other tank (Or you feel like soaking some damage with a twelve second Hand of Sac with a two minute cooldown). Other than that, you can pray for a frontal or fire mechanic in order to keep your Vengeance to remain at least somewhat contributing.
This, is terribly flawed system in which you’ll need to pray not only for a nice shield bash crit to follow up your immediate taunt and retain agro, but also soaking enough damage in that short while that you -need- to build threat so your Vengeance can build back up. In a system that wildly fluctuates and drops when no damage is done to you, it seems this concept was given very little thought to how it affects you when NOT tanking.
I’ve seen many throwing out their own desires for Vengeance and admit many hold merit, so I’ll put mine out there as well for theorizing, though I will say just about anything implimented needs to maintain its stacks much smoother and longer than the current system does.
1) When damage is calculated to be added to your Vengeance counter, treat the damage as if it were unmitigated. A large part of the Vengeance stacking issue, both now and likely in the future, is that hits that come in double mitigated from blocking and armor are nullifying a huge chunk of the damage before the small piece of that already small pie is factored into Vengeance. If they wish to keep a system in place that causes the stacks to fall rapidly, increase the rate at which it is gained by doing so. You’d get your stacks faster no matter the source of damage, maintain them easier, and you could even throw in a design that lets your avoidances contribute to your Vengeance in the same fashion, gaining the appropriate AP for what would have originally struck you.
2) Avoidance stats are turned offensive. This seems easy enough and straight forward, and there even was a system already partially in place for some of this (Riposte, anyone?). Simply reintroduce a mechanic tied to either vengeance or a seperate buff only obtained via the tanking trees that bases its damage off your HP so that each parry or dodge will do a set amount of damage that increases as your gear does.
3) Each class gets a unique (*gasp*) mechanic tied to their mastery. Paladins could get a mechanic tied to Divine Bulwark that turned it back into Holy Shield, Warriors could double the damage of their Shield slam on a successful critical block, DK’s shield effect could cause damage or generate large threat when it’s eaten through, and druids gain a one charge damage buff to their next attack with each Savage Defense proc. These are just random ideas, nothing thought through specifically, but it would be nice to see some unique tie-ins rather than just a blanket change that four different specs have access to.
Just some things to throw out and mull over. I do think Blizzard will be changing the mechanic to better suit tanks come a hotfix or two in Cata. I just worry that it may aid one class more than another because of differing tank designs or that every facet of the tank concept is really thought through.
I have all hope that GC will be working on a fix for this. He is to active in the community, reads to many external sites and is to smart to have missed just how on the nose everyone is on this issue.
I know its an early assumption but (for when it is changed) thank you Ana for raising this at Blizzcon and putting it in the light so we do not have to suffer later.
It does still boggle the mind how a mechanic like this can go against every other mechanic change they have made.
.-= Orthien’s last blog ..Assassins Creed- Brotherhood =-.
A great response to GC’s post; I wish he had understood the original spirit of your question in the first place. (When I was watching the Blizzcon livefeed and you got up to ask the question I was like OMG I READ THAT BLOG :O)
Another issue I tend to take with Vengeance is trash pulls. I understand raid mechanics aren’t built around trash and that there will be a lot more use for CC and less AoE in trash pulls, but here’s my issue with raid trash and threat: I’m the offtank for my raid, along with a warrior MT.
I can run into a trash pull and HotR; guaranteeing myself initial threat and all subsequent Vengeance stacks for that pull, effectively single tanking the trash pull since, as my Vengeance ramps up the warrior has less of a chance of pulling anything off without taunting them. Likewise, if he gets in the first charge + TC I’m left twiddling my thumbs.
In ICC this isn’t such a big issue as the trash doesn’t hurt too badly, but in Ruby Sanctum it can be pretty brutal on the healers.
We’ve started making up for this issue by having him pull everything but them I’ll immediately Righteous Defense him, but that gives us very little control over which mobs I get to tank, so it can be hard for our interrupters to know which tank they need to be near on interrupts, in case the casters get split. We could single taunt and cherry pick our mobs, but by the time that’s done the pull’s usually already wiped or done.
Anyways, that’s my addition to “Why I don’t like the Vengeance mechanic.” I hope they take your thoughts into consideration, they’re clearly very well thought out, great post. :) (You looked great on the Live Feed BTW! :D)
This reminds be of early vanilla rage generation.
The skiddish encounter start and transistion issues with avoidance bother me.
Frankly they should just add the mechanic fractionally to “pve” avoidance / mitigation combat events. It shouldn’t even proc in pvp (arena/bgs), just remove it from procing in pvp and you will save that whole paragraph explanation about its intent.
Vengeance just isn’t the answer tanks need, at least not in it’s current form. It’s a nice idea, but it is not working as intended. It needs work. Changes will need to be made.
I’ve been following this topic off and on so I may not be the most informed on it. I also don’t do much spreadsheet theorycrafting either. Basically, I’m a slightly more than casual player, so I might be wrong in a couple points. Go easy on me!
However, just to throw a monkey in the wrench, a couple “Devil’s Advocate” points I’d like to bring up:
1 – Parry: wasn’t this going to change to only give like 50% mitigation come Cataclysm? Or did this change not happen? Because if this change does/did happen, then all your parries will end up giving you more Vengeance. (Doeant help Bear tanks, I know.)
2 - DPS Throttling: Those of you that raided Ony at level 60 should remember DPSing Slowly at the beginning of the fight and waiting for 5 Sunders before letting loose. Isn’t the whole idea of this reworking of classes and abilities supposed to bring some of that feel back? DPS shouldn’t open up like a clap of thunder if threat is known to be an issue. Since they are making it known in advance, everyone needs to go in with their eyes open and use some restraint to help ensure the raid’s survival because survival = win! Granted, this isn’t keeping with the “Top the Meter” crowd, but raiding shouldn’t be about the meter anyway. It should be about killing Internet Dragons! (Yes, I know the faster they die, the better, but dead DPS also does no damage.)
That all being said, I still agree that Vengeance shouldn’t scale BACKWARDS as you get more
avoidance. So what if the bosses get more expertise as you go higher in tier? You still want to avoid getting hit as much as possible!
I agree it should be changed, but I’m also willing to wait till 85 and see how well it works according to their plan. Because it’s not balanced for our current gear and levels. It’s balanced for level 85 content.
Who knows? Maybe it will work out the way they want it to? Or we’ll have plenty of logs to show how it needs to change.
Thanks,
Z/C/H
1) Parry became a dodge clone – it long longer hastens your next attack, and the 50% on two attacks thing didn’t happen.
2) Vanilla didn’t have in-play enrage timers on essentially ever boss. The days of having the luxury of waiting for 5 sunders are dead and gone.
Ha, when I read Ghostcrawler’s post I immediately thought: Ana’s been harassing him via e-mail. :P
The concerns people have been raising here cover everything I’m worried about, really. I’ve moved to a new guild for Cataclysm and know I’m going to have to push my threat further than I have in the past to keep up with the more skilled DPS. The idea of causing a wipe because I started the fight with an (un)lucky avoidance streak seems so massively counter-intuitive to me that I dread it. I remember using my T10 4pc bonus during heroic ICC fights as I made the pull with the intention of giving my healers a bit of time to get into position stress-free; now, that behaviour would actually be punished. It just doesn’t make sense to me. For tanks like Meloree, who will be on the bleeding edge of progression, the problem is exacerbated.
On the other hand, that Ghostcrawler has taken the time to make a post about Vengeance, even if he hasn’t admitted the issues that come along with it, means he’s thinking about it. If he’s thinking about it, he’s been following the community’s thoughts and knows our concerns exist. I expect that by the time Vengeance is a Big Deal (assuming it’s really not an essential mechanic to hold threat in T11, like they say…) there will be some sort of fix. Well, more likely a week AFTER it becomes a Big Deal, but hey, a fix is a fix, and it’s more than we’d get in most MMO’s.
@Meloree: I honestly disagree with your second point. The only thing that prevents a raid from waiting for sunders is not having a warrior in the raid. If we take a look at BQL, for example, dps frequently dial down or don’t dps at all to ensure certain other dps are able to get that first bite. It is exactly the same thing as waiting for sunders. A 5-7 second wait is rarely liable to wipe a raid after killing a boss a couple times, and many times not even then.
As for the post as a general, my perspective comes from that as a healer/dps with an alt tankadin. Vengeance is a decent mechanic but at least in the department of our warrior as compared to our paladins or bear, it’s easier to be threat capped as a dps. As a healer it’s a strange mechanic to have to deal with, and I would not want my tanks removing gear or swapping for dps pieces because they are unable to hold threat otherwise – it just makes my job that much harder.
Obviously, vengeance needs some work, I just hope that it doesn’t come down to making healers go back to the spam healing style we had/have in wrath, more so if we also have to deal with that with dps. Triage healing is a challenge but it’s also not entirely fun (Wrath had more of a triage style than cataclysm seems to).
Back to dps perspective though – being threat capped sucks. Period. Especially when you’re a dot-based class like warlock or shadow priest (I myself play both), as theres no real way to terminate dps until dots fall off. This is a secondary problem with vengeance; some dps are not actually able to hold back on their dps as much as they might like to due to inability to control when dots crit. Some food for thought while I wait another hour to fly out of here.
I believe we have a slight difference in perspective. I am of the opinion that “after two kills” is exactly equal to “when the content is no longer relevant”. In progression, enrage timers are typically tight, and in-play, and 5-7 seconds matters.
Time will prove one of us right, but I expect that rather than ask DPS to wait, we will instead figure out the correct hoop to jump through so that they don’t have to. Because it’s much better to make a kill hard on one person (the tank) than to make it hard on 25 people.
@Tomaj: This is a pretty classic difference between progression levels. A lot of guilds who hit the enrage timer on a boss will wipe a few times, come back with a little more gear the next week, and be able to push the boss just in time. However, when you’re progressing at a competitive level that’s not always an option–DPS, tanks and healers all find ways to push out the last 5% of damage they need through careful planning, min-maxing, etc. If the issue is that DPS aren’t able to go all-out for the first 5-7 seconds of a fight due to a tank-threat ramp up time, in those guilds the onus is on the tank to figure out a solution, not for the DPS to hold back. With enrage timers becoming tighter and tighter (Festergut, for example, with no buff, was a matter of milliseconds between a kill and a wipe) a 5 second wait, at the top end of progression, is I feel very likely to cause wipes on a regular basis.
Well, Meloree, then that’s a perspective I truly don’t share, in regards to the boss no longer being “relevant” after two kills. It could apply to the end-game boss on hardmode; would it still “no longer be relevant” then? After all, many people went through both vanilla and BC with the “wait for sunders” mindset (though the number of sunders varied from guild to guild), Wrath has been the only actual exception to this.
The other thing to consider is if you make it hard on the tank, it might also be irreparably difficult on the tank in terms of threat. If a DPS pulls off because the tank didn’t have a little bit extra snap threat, then that DPS (or multiple DPS) die, that’s an automatic wipe, as well. It may not always be just the one person that it’s difficult on, in the end.
@Kerriodos Be that as it may, it doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t always going to be the case. Festergut (and BQL and Sindragosa) were actually more to challenge healers (and to a lesser extent, tanks) than they were to challenge DPS, so it’s a little different than a pure DPS race (like Patchwerk). But, as for enrage timers being increasingly small, I also disagree with that. Out of 16 encounters (all bosses from ICC and RS), only two (to my knowledge) had 5-minute hard enrage timers – Festergut and BQL, which were designed specifically to challenge the healers (yes, they’re DPS races, but they’re also there to have the fast-paced healing that was required throughout this expansion). On the other end of the spectrum, we have encounters like LK, with a 12-minute enrage timer. While it is entirely possible that those precious few seconds can cause a wipe, in reality and application, I don’t think it’s going to be 100% probability, either.
.-= Tomaj’s last blog ..In Defense of Chakra =-.
Greetings. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree – I personally consider progression content to be the only relevant content, but if you don’t think that way, you almost certainly won’t agree with me.
I would like to comment on enrage timers, though: The flat amount of time given in an enrage timer does not bear much relevance to how tight it is. H-LK has a 15 minute enrage timer, and it is also the single tightest enrage check in the game. Putricide and Deathwhispers 10-minute enrage timers are also similarily strict – at least, they were once. Out of 12 hardmode encounters in ICC and RS (discarding gunship), only Marrowgar, Saurfang, Rotface, and Blood Princes did not have a hard enrage that was in-play to some degree in progression. Of those, Rotface and Saurfang both had punishing soft-enrages which strongly rewarded higher DPS. In 10 out of 12 hardmode encounters every single second is a precious commodity, not to be wasted.
And that’s fine, I’m just saying that if the boss *is* progression content, by no means is it “two kills and it’s not relevant.” :P
I also don’t disagree with you on hardmode enrages, either, but it may very well change, too. That’s really my only point regarding the waiting tactic. The big thing is, as well, how it affects healers, too. An avoidance streak may potentially make it easier on healers, but at the same time, makes it that much more difficult for a tank (especially in a tank swap scenario, such as Festergut, Gluth, etc.) to actually be able to build up enough threat to actually be able to hold off the DPS. As was mentioned previously, it can lead to an instant wipe there just because the tank *doesn’t* have the necessary threat and the timer is off by a few seconds. In truth, I like the idea of Vengeance, I just think the application of it is lacking and leaves much to be desired because of potential negative ramifications.
.-= Tomaj’s last blog ..In Defense of Chakra =-.
Vengeance should stack even if you avoid/dodge the attack. So, this would be a better tank/defense mechanism.
Tanks dont have to be a sponge to get threat.
Cheers from brazil
.-= Juliano’s last blog ..Rotação de Paladino Protection no 401 =-.
“A very nice paladin player” :-)
awwww. He’s quite the charmer ;-)
I pretty much agree with your points. It is always a little bit strange to encounter situations where you have to go against your survivial logic to keep up the threat.
Maybe thats what will aacompany us the whole next expansion – the balance between threat and survival. I feel bad for progression-tanks if thats the case. Imho this scenario would link the success of the kill way too much to the main-tank (even more than it is already the case).
Well, from my perspective, I didn’t saw a whole lot of difference with the introduction of Vengeance. I don’t know when it drops, when it is stacked to its highest nor when it is rather low. If I see a DPS catching up on threat I get out of my lazy ass and work more on it, saving Avenging Wrath for those situations might be better, although the 2 minutes cooldown kinda of kills a good amount of its fun.
People seem to be referring to Vengeance as if it was some kind of god sent gift, it is just a helper for some situations. Tanks won’t be able to rely on it all the time and for all situations and expecting it will provide infinite threat is a bad call. Tanks will still need to spec for threat, they will still need to swap gear for threat and hasty DPS will still eat a few punches when they attack too soon or too hard.
Vengeance is just a small boost in threat, it could be better, but take for what it is, not more not less.
150% boost in your AP is not a “small boost in threat.” Rhi and I have the Vengeance addon installed and we can see it. We were hitting 80-90% Vengeance stacks throughout ICC last week, and that’s over 100% bonus AP.
That’s a lot of extra threat when Vengeance is stacked up – and a threat not stacked up when you don’t have Vengeance, or if you get unlucky with avoidance at the start of a fight.
I don’t think you read my post. I was complaining about this:
1) it makes the beginning of a fight irritatingly dependant on RNG.
2) it encourages untanklike behavior when we’re looking to stack it up. Yes, for that much extra AP, there will be tanks who will seek to stack it up.
3) it accounts for a silly amount of extra threat.
“L2P if your DPS creep up on you” really doesn’t address any of those three concerns. I think the mechanic isn’t really logical right now and could use some tweaking.
I like what the devs are trying to do here, and they are trying to solve a problem, but I just want them to tweak the solution.
Really? I’ve been lucky to manage 30% as an average stack size in ICC and RS heroic. Sometimes it gets higher, but it rarely STAYS high for long.
Perhaps I just have overeager disc priests. I’ve also been wearing a high-survivability set for all of ICC/RS of late, just to get a feel for Vengeance mechanics, so that might not help any.
On Heroic Lich King and Festergut in particular, I definitely saw Pitbull’s dinky little vengeance meter maxed out. Not always for long, but I definitely hit the bell a few times.
I believe 150% is the max, you’re not really supposed to be at 150% all the time.
Can’t comment much if having it at 90% most of the time is a lot.
1) The beginning of a fight is not RNG, it depends on the tank using its best abilities in the beginning and do its best from that point on and also on the DPS giving him a couple seconds before bursting. That is hardly random in any way;
2) Maximizing your threat generation is and always has been part of tanking. If you need to swap some survival stats for threat, it gets done. Now you not only get the benefit of the extra threat stats but you will also get something more with Vengeance. Heck when I had BT on farm in my warrior I had specs few would recommend just to get more threat. I knew the healers could handle it, my concern was to prevent that ‘lock from getting eaten by Teron.
3) What is this point supposed to mean? That you’re doing too much threat? Or you’re doing too much threat in the unlikely case you’ll get Vengeance up to 150%? Awesome.
I’m not saying it won’t need improvements, I’m saying I doubt many tanks will go off their way just to make sure they have a huge stack of Vengeance. The benefit of Vengeance during a 5-10 minutes fight will be dependent on random events yes, but I don’t think it is supposed to be the holy grail of tanking.
We can argue that Vengeance should keep stacking partially with avoidance, but that won’t change the fact that due to some RNG, Vengeance will either drop entirely or reduce itself considerably, making it unreliable.
I don’t think you read my post. I was complaining about this:
Tanks that are basing their threat performance on an absolutely random stat.
Blue post part 2: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1074894#blog
What those blue posts (and most commenters) seem to miss, is that Vengeance isn’t on/off. You very rarely peg Vengeance at 100% for long periods of time, and if you do, then the threat portion of your job is over for the fight.
Because Vengeance is a rolling average – and a fairly quantifiable one – it has very significant reverse scaling issues. In particular, as your avoidance increases, your average stack size decreases. As your armor/mitigation increases, your average stack size decreases. Stamina just offers a cap on Vengeance, but it’s not particularily relevant because vengeance doesn’t generally get that high. In particular, if you’re not capping Vengeance, then adding more stamina doesn’t improve the benefit you get from Vengeance.
So, we have a tank-scaling mechanics that scales positively with boss damage (not stamina – boss damage), and scales negatively with avoidance and mitigation. This also makes mere number-tweaks on Vengeance, to address scaling, difficult to make, since upping the cap to 15% of stamina doesn’t really change much – if you can’t cap it to begin with, you’re not really scaling much with it.
If tank threat is designed to be sufficient without Vengeance in T11 at 85, then we’re going to find ourselves in exactly the same situation as Wrath. Tank threat is OP for two tiers, and suddenly you might have to work a bit in the final tiers. Only this time, you’re at the mercy of RNG for doing it, you cannot make adjustments to reliably impact your short-term threat generation because it’s dependant on factors that are not in your control.
Tanks have dealt with negatively scaling mechanics for years. We’ll deal with this, too. It just seems like one step forward and two steps back.