1. The 2pc is weak, but cool
Protection, 2P — Your Judgement ability now also grants a physical absorb shield equal to 30% of the damage it dealt.
Not a huge amount of mitigation. My average Judgement on Shannox last week, for example, was around 14k damage. So, that’d be a 4200 damage bubble I’d put up. Which would obviously break just about as soon as it came up. Still, it’s free mitigation — nothing to sneeze at.
This is also the first time in as long as I can remember the two-piece bonus for a tier set was an actual survivability bonus. Even if it’s a pittance, that’s still incredible it’s not some boring “x more damage when you do y ability” song and dance.
2. 4pc is pre-nerf DG
Protection, 4P — Reduces the cooldown of Divine Guardian by 60 sec and increases the radius of its effect by 70 yards.
This is just silly. The four-piece bonus changes Divine Guardian to a two-minute cooldown and 100 yards range. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly what the ability was before it was nerfed in 4.1 when warriors were given a raid cooldown. So, try not to wallow in the insult that we’re being given a pre-nerf shell of one of our spells as a “bonus”, there’s a lot more that’s wrong with this.
3. 4pc is flagrantly unbalanced with other tanks
Not in a bad way; actually, our four-piece is much, much better than the other three tanking four-piece bonuses. Warriors, druids, and DKs will have to give up one of their personal survivability cooldowns to perform their four-piece raid cooldown. Hell, a warrior now has to give up two cooldowns to do two different raid cooldowns. Meanwhile, our raid cooldown remains that — a raid cooldown — and continues to offer no actual damage reduction to us.
This sucks pretty badly for the other tanks, who I’m expecting we’ll hear about being forced to blow their necessary cooldowns at inopportune times and thus possibly putting themselves at risk for the benefit of the raid. I’m not sure I’d be thrilled hearing the raid leader call for my to blow Guardian of Ancient Kings when a burst of AOE damage was coming up, when I was planning to save it for a big nuke on the tank down the road.
This also fills me with dread with how much raid-wide AOE damage this is going to be in Dragon Soul.
4. No personal benefit to 4pc
This is minor, but it kind of bothers me. Other than for fights where there are major AOE burst events — ie, something like Majordomo Staghelm — what would compel us to wearing four pieces of tier? If we have a situation like Firelands where the offset pieces were better itemized over tier in two out of five cases, what would drive us to put on that fourth piece and activate our ultimate bonus?
There’s no awesome “you are totally amazing with this bonus available and will be that much more unkillable” set bonus. We just had a more frequent, less restrictive raidwall. Feels bad, man.
I’m hearing a lot of comments about this that align with your take on the 4 piece bonus. From my perspective as heal/tank (druid) specced raider do I find the existence on this 4 piece tank set bonus troubling? No, because both t11 and t12 have already had their most trying survivability points defined by raid wide damage, this is nothing new. Giving all tanks a tool to help with this is a change for the better.
On the “no personal benefit” side, I also don’t buy that argument. A tank’s job has always been to keep the raid alive, tanking and healing are two sides of the same coin (probably the reason I’m attracted to both roles). So a bonus that improves your ability to accomplish that, is of great personal benefit.
I disagree on your last point. A tank’s number one priority is keeping themselves alive, then #2 is not killing the raid (usually by holding threat). They can usually help with keeping the raid alive using cooldowns, but that can’t be their primary focus. If a tank neglects his personal survivability for the good of the group, it won’t serve the group any better when he gets globaled in the next burst event and then the boss eats the raid.
I’d venture it’s the responsibility of the healer first and foremost to keep the raid alive. If that tank can help, great, but it should not be his primary focus.
While I agree with your thoughts on the main goal of a tank, I also have to side with WeWhoEat. I’ve always spec’d, geared, and focused my character on staying alive, first and foremost, but I’ve also enjoyed the swing towards being a protector of the group as a whole, since that is what a tank’s job is, when you boil it all down. We are the only thing between the big bad monster and the chewy innards of our companions, and having abilities that help us be the protectors of the group always seemed so…right, to me. So I can appreciate the furtherance towards being said protectors of the group.
But we only protect “the group” in special occasions. Thats like saying “I love you!” to your wife only on wedding day and only then wearing the ring(4pc) as well.
I’d hate that.
That’s not actually true though, now is it? I mean, our entire job revolves around protecting the group. If we weren’t there taking the damage instead of the DPS or Healers, they’d be dead. These “raid wall” abilities, just take it a step further. In essence, Blizzard is saying “Instead of just taking the hits to the face for Joe DPS or Jerry Healer, you’re also able to shield them from those nasty auras or AoE blasts that Billy the Two Headed Dragon is dishing out as well.”
I sound a bit silly here, but I hope you get what I mean.
I have no problem with the existence of raid-wall abilities but the 4pc of the third content patch of an expansion should not be about an ability that is not really needed that often.
Granted, its always neat to have it but there are only a few occasions there it is necessary (like Fandral and maybe Alysrazor).
Thats like having a holy priest 4pc bonus on shields and a disc priest 4pc(does that even exist?) on something holy priest related :P
@Thorned
Really? How about beth burn phase, Ryolyth when eruption would stack too high, Shannox burn phase and Rag has a bunch of times where its useful. This tier was pretty much defined by raid wide damage and you have no idea what awaits us in the next tier…
I can appreciate too — just I’m not sure I can put the survivability of a DPS before my own, haha.
I’m not saying we have to put their survivability first, heavens no. In a situation like the other tanking classes have, I’m sorry, but I’d hoard those cooldowns for myself, and if they benefit the raid when I need it most, that’s great, if it’s wasted, blame Blizzard. It’s been proven time and again that it’s pointless to risk your own life for the life of a DPS, simply because encounters can be beaten while losing one or two. Losing the tank almost always results in a wipe.
I agree with you on most of this, although I’m gonna have to double check my own logs; I don’t remember my judgments ever hitting that hard.
In any case, the 2pc bonus feels like a transition towards the new tanking model discussed by the developers, active mitigation and so forth. Interesting design, although a 4k shield just doesn’t seem very substantial, like a spell-power bonus to make Word of Glory more potent.
Huh, I hadn’t even thought about the fact that the other tanks have to sacrifice one of their personal cds for the aoe one. What a choice! Really interesting thoughts anyway, will be fun to see how it turns out.