The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
All I Ever Do is Niche: Part 2
by Aensu
Like a fish flailing in the sand, I unabashedly bare my vulnerability to you in the interests of self preservation with part 2 of this article. Don’t worry, that mixed emotion of pity and amusement with a slight tinge of horror that you’re feeling is perfectly normal.
Last time, I railed about Blizzard creating a tank shortage with their misguided attempts to make every tank class feel needed and special, while at the same time making every tank class feel useless and impotent on a regular basis, as well as making the job of tank recruitment and gearing 3 times harder than it needs to be. I also promised to offer solutions that would equalize the tanking classes, without turning them into the exact same class with differently colored icons, as well as offering them some non-tanking ability without overpowering the other two specs or ousting other classes entirely. So lets do that then.
Warrior
The strengths of the warrior lie in ease of gearing and out of the box tankability. Many of their most important tanking abilities are innate or come early in the talent trees, and even a poorly geared warrior can become uncrushable at the touch of a button. Among their unique tanking talents are limited fear immunity, spell reflection, and the ability to slow the melee attack speed of their foes by a massive 20%. The former two make them the tank of choice (or even the only tank capable) for a number of encounters, while the latter makes at least one warrior of any spec required for practically everything. The warrior also boasts a robust ability to generate threat indefinitely on single targets, whether they are actually tanking or not. Not quite as good as that of a druid, but still pretty decent.
For all their advantages, the warrior falls short. Their ability to generate threat on multiple targets is abhorrent, and seldom adequate in situations that are designed for an AoE tank. While it is possible for a warrior to conquer healing threat on more than 4 targets at a time, each additional target beyond 4 increases the difficulty of this feat exponentially, and even one mistake by an inattentive or overzealous DPSer can cause the warrior’s tenuous grasp on aggro to slip and send multiple mobs heading for the healer. Further, the ability of the protection warrior to contribute anything meaningful when they’re not required to tank is laughable.
Thunder Clap
Simply remove the target cap. The warrior is still limited by a 4 second cooldown and a relatively low threat output, yet becomes functional for keeping the heat off the healers when dealing with large numbers of opponents. DPS still wont be able to spam AoE unpunished, at least not without giving the warrior a very massive head start.
Devastate
More than once I’ve heard rumors and spotted “Devastate will now hit with both weapons while dual wielding” in early patch notes. Do it! This simple change would offer the protection warrior increased soloing capability, allow them to do more meaningful DPS when not needed to tank, and give them the option to generate increased threat and rage when shadow tanking or facing trivial content (without having to remove armor or swap to dps gear). And they still wouldn’t be able to outdamage DPS warriors or any other DPS class, unless they really suck, but then it’s not an issue of class balance anyway.
Druid
The druid’s claim to fame in the tanking arena is their superior armor and health. They also boast some moderate capability for AoE tanking, though just like warriors, as the number of opponents rise, maintaining this AoE threat can become exceedingly difficult. Additionally, their tanking spec also serves as a DPS spec, and can even offer some minor healing support. With their innate abilities, they can contribute meaningfully to any fight with a simple gear swap.
While their higher armor and health is meant to help mitigate it, the druid’s complete lack of defense against crushing blows and massive spell attacks can cause them to be undesirable or simply unable to effectively tank in some situations. There have been rumors of Blizzard planning to make druids immune to crushing blows or removing crushing blows entirely, but this could only result in yet another nerf to the druid’s armor, health, and other things to maintain balance among the tanking classes.
Swipe
Change to: “Swipe enemies in front of you, inflicting X damage. Damage increased by attack power. This ability cannot crit.” Make it subject to the same AoE damage caps that exist already. Removing the target cap gives the druid increased AoE tanking and damage dealing capability to closer match that of a paladin, while still requiring them to constantly use their global cooldown and keep enemies in front of them for it to work.
Block
A new ability! 20 rage, 10 sec cooldown. “The druid takes a defensive stance, granting a 75% chance to block the next 2 attacks for (str * 1) damage and absorbing the next spell cast on him/her. Lasts 5 sec.” Expensive to use, doesn’t increase their mitigation by much, and still leaves the druid somewhat vulnerable to crushes, but gives them the ability to handle encounters that rely on Spell Reflection without the return damage and, combined with their naturally high dodge rate, allows them to avoid devastating strings of consecutive crushes. (it happens, more often than you’d think) And hey, if random wild bears in the forest can block attacks, why the hell can’t druids?
Demoralizing Roar
Change to: “The druid roars, increasing nearby enemies’ time between attacks by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.” Alter Feral Aggression to increase the slowing effect by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%. The druid trades one warrior debuff for another, and is no longer reliant on the presence or attentiveness of a warrior to do the same job. Would be overwritten and blocked by Thunder Clap so as not to impede a warrior’s ability to generate AoE threat.
Rebirth and Innervate
Add bear form versions of these spells that cost large amounts of rage instead of mana and share cooldowns with the original versions. Only tanking druids are robbed of these class defining support spells, because they cannot afford to shift out of bear form while tanking anything serious.
Paladin
Everyone knows that Paladins are the reigning champions of AoE tanking. Their once inferior health pools have been brought up to par, and while their mitigation is still slightly behind that of the warrior’s, it’s a fact that paladins can successfully tank nearly everything.
When the paladin is not the main tank, however, they become feeble and have issues with longevity. While they can backup heal to some extent with the right gear, they obviously lack the supporting talents of the holy tree, and typically wont receive the benefits of being grouped with a shadow priest and/or restoration shaman in a raid environment. Naturally, they also receive no benefit from spiritual attunement if they’re not taking lots of damage and getting lots of healing.
Consecration
Add to ranks 4, 5, and 6: “Enemies effected by Consecration have the time between their attacks increased by 20% for 10 sec”. This removes the paladin’s reliance on warriors for tanking bosses and allows them to down rank some to conserve mana when needed, without allowing them to spam rank 1 indefinitely just for the slowing effect (say, in pvp). The slowing debuff would be overwritten and blocked by Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Roar, but targets effected by those debuffs would still take damage from Consecration.
Holy Shield
Add to rank 4: “Absorbs the next spell cast on you within 5 sec.” Would allow Holy Shield to also function like the warrior’s Spell Reflection ability in a PvE environment, with the same 5 sec duration/10 sec cooldown on the additional buff, only it would simply absorb the next reflectable spell. Expensive to use in a PvP environment, without the return damage, while still allowing paladins to effectively tank encounters that rely on the use of Spell Reflection at the cost of saving the Holy Shield cooldown and thus losing some melee mitigation.
Combat Expertise
Add: “Regenerates mana equal to 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% of your Stamina every 5 sec.” Gives the paladin some means of longevity when they’re not receiving massive heals. Is 10% of a tanking paladin’s stamina alot? Yes, it is, especially when stacked with raid buffs. But they’ll lose alot of that when switching into non-tank gear sets, while still retaining some extra mana regen to help them support a group or solo more efficiently. And when they are in tank gear, they receive a larger boost to make them less susceptible to mana starvation when off tanking weak trash, shadow tanking bosses, or tanking trivial content. The talent is too deep in the protection tree for other specs to get it, and protection paladins would have to sacrifice too many key talents to remain a viable MT to have this and illumination at the same time.
Seal of Righteousness
Increase the coefficient of the damage per hit for this seal by a decent amount, and further increase the bonus from using it with a two hander. This gives the paladin a needed boost to single target threat both while tanking and shadow tanking, and improves their ability to solo anything other than camps of weak hitting melee mobs that aren’t interspersed with ranged attackers at faster than a snail’s pace. Better yet, simply give it a damage bonus from the Righteous Fury buff, then it only applies to tanking and soloing/pvp. Seal of Righteousness + Righteous Fury? Makes sense to me!
* * *
All in all, the individual tank classes are still the best at what they do and have maintained their unique styles, but each are ensured the key abilities of slowing attack speed, spell reflection, crush mitigation, and large scale AoE threat, so that a raid can proceed with any combination of tanks without unreasonably harsh disadvantages. Warriors and paladins gain some functionality and flexibility in areas other than tanking without having to respec, and druids regain the use of a few of their most prominent support abilities so that they actually are something more than a warrior with fewer options while tanking. All from a few simple changes that don’t require massive retooling of current mechanics, encounters or itemization, while maintaining balance with other classes and specs.
Of course, chances are nothing like this would ever happen. It seems like Blizzard wants tanks to be crippled in every other area in addition to being crippled in a number of tanking situations, and wants you to have a bloated tank roster for your guild.
But one can dream, I suppose.
April 21st, 2008
I’m pretty sure Thunder Clap is on a 6 second cooldown, because I can use 3 other global cooldowns while waiting for TC to come back when I’m multi-tanking.
Interesting article, I’m not sure I agree with all your points, but you’re on the soapbox, you can say what you want
Here’s my 2 cents. Caveat: My guild doesn’t raid, and my personal progression is limited to Karazahn. My experience is in the 5-man and heroic content. I’ve done everything except MrT, as on Kalecgos the roving packs of feral children that seem to populate the Alliance during peak hours, and the associated corpse runs they cause, make Sunwell Isle particularly un-fun for me.
I believe that since there are so few encounters where more than 4 monsters _must_ be tanked that Thunder Clap doesn’t really need to have the target limit removed. Shattered Halls comes immediately to mind as a generalization breaker, but I’ve found that my mouseover sunder macro lets me keep 6 on me without much problem. My “Tank 6″ rotation goes like this: Thunder Clap, Shield Slam, Sunder, Sunder (mouseover sunders on the mobs that Thunder Clap isn’t hitting, and of course with 6 mobs beating on me every auto swing is also a heroic strike). My heroic strikes, Shield Slams and Thunder Claps are enough to hold aggro over DPS, and my other 3 global cooldowns keep the other 5 mobs interested in me over the healer. Admittedly it’s not easy, but that’s why healers have aggro reduction moves - priests fade, shaman drop tranquil air, pallies have super low healing aggro built in and can Salv, and druids… Well, druids could catform and cower, haha! Ok, druid healers get the short end of the aggro reduction stick, but regen healing isn’t super high aggro anyhow ;D
What I would love to see is an Improved Spell Reflect talent at the same tier as Shield Slam (get rid of improved defensive stance? I never take that talent anyway) that increases the duration to match the cooldown and maybe even lets it absorb a spell or two after it reflects the first one.
My druid alt is level 43, and my paladin alt is only 27 so I can’t really speak to the rest of your article, but I did enjoy reading it.
For the Horde!
April 21st, 2008
I only have a tanking Paladin (SSC-range of experience) and no Druid or Warrior. The paladin changes you’re suggesting are interesting, but they seem like a bit of overkill. Also, you’re loading all the “fixes” onto the current set of tools; maybe it makes more sense to either build some new and different tools (a new spell or the like) or attach the effects to existing tools that don’t get used as much.
For example, you could add the slowing effect to Judgement of Justice to add an interesting choice for Paladin Tanks between threat (crusader), mitigation (justice), and longevity (wisdom).
Hooking the 5-second spell absorption onto Holy Shield has the problem of requiring you to stay crushable (no Holy Shield) for most of the fight unless there’s a cast-bar longer than 5 seconds. Otherwise, your Holy Shield might be on cooldown, but the spell reflection wouldn’t be up. Honestly, it sounds like an epic Libram to me in the current description, a bit like Tome of the Lightbringer.
I don’t really like the Combat Expertise change, either. I think it would play out badly at lower power-levels, and make prot pallies even more the kings of 5-man instances. What about refunding 20% of the cost of Holy Shield for each charge remaining at the end of the duration. With 2 points in Improved Holy Shield, this would be 56 mana per unused charge, or 168 mana every 10s when “shadow tanking”. This also has the benefit that Paladins, when “shadow tanking” remain uncrushable, but in 5-man instances you won’t see additional regen effects.
April 22nd, 2008
those would be great but everytime a buff is given to any hybrid tank class the warriors throw too much of a fit because then they wouldn’t be a guaranteed their raid spot. i am not trying to say all warriors do this, just the bad ones, there are many good warriors out there that realize it doesn’t matter what class you are if you know how to tank well
April 22nd, 2008
@Bavmolo
Sorry again about your comment getting stuck in the filter!
Not being a tank myself, the only comment I can make about what you said is…it’s Aensu. *laughs* Tanking less than five mobs at a time is boring for him AND me (as his healer).
To be fair, changing the game around to accommodate just his tanking style is at least a little bit silly.
That aside, there are enough important encounters where one type of tank is vastly superior to the others (heroic shattered halls, as you said, and Jan Alai’s adds - though I hear he’s been nerfed, so maybe not that one).
The idea isn’t necessarily that the tanks are broken so much as it is that there are times when you NEED one kind of tank over another. Having one kind of tank with an advantage in a particular situation is fine, so long as it can be done by the other tanks without requiring vast leaps of skill and luck.
The changes he suggests don’t mean that warriors will multi-mob tank as well as a paladin. They mean that warriors would be an option in multi-mob tanking situations, rather than having to stop and swap out raiders in order to get a particular encounter down.
Aaaand since I have absolutely no desire to be a tank, I’ll hop out of the limelight now. *grins*
pip pip cheerio!
April 22nd, 2008
@Bavmolo
Your comments lead me to believe that you don’t know how Tranquil Air works. “The totem reduces the threat caused by all party members within 20 yards by 20%.”
Meaning this would negate all the bonus a shaman would get by trying to reducing the threat because it would also effect you, most Resto Shamans have Totemic Mastery which gives all totems an extra 10 yards meaning he’d have to drop way behind him/her to make sure it out ranged you and only effected them. Not an easy task to accomplish and can often cause more problems then worthwhile. Not to mention it is not an instant threat drop meaning it take even more work for you to gain aggro over the shaman if he/she was dropping said totem.
So next time a Shaman drops Tranquil Air kindly tell them to give you your Windfury or Grace of Air, because its going to make your job a whole lot easier.
April 22nd, 2008
@ego
Thanks for following up!
As I said, having no ‘real’ raid experience (I’ve pugged kara, that’s it) means that I’ve not experienced the content which forces me to stand aside for a different tank. I do know that when we took our 7 level 70’s into Zul’Gurub last month I happily DPS’d away when our Holy Pally had to tank the bat boss - it was annoying the first time through the fight, when I realized there was no way I was going to hold aggro on all the bats, so I guess I can see where Aensu’s coming from there. It seems a little silly to slow progression to gear up 3 different tanks, just to satisfy Blizzard’s desire to have every tank class be a perfect unique snowflake.
@sup
You caught me! I was theorycrafting on the tranquil air thing. My regular resto shammy buddy always drops windfury for me, because she is a wonderful person who knows how happy I get when the swirling winds appear ’round my blade
In other news, my druid alt got to try out the catform/cower thing last night on an uldaman run, and it worked! Hilarious.
April 23rd, 2008
@Bavmolo
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=25264
4 seconds ;D
Yeah, I’ve “aoe” tanked heroic shattered halls without CC many times as a warrior. When I speak of “large amounts of opponents” I’m talking in the double digits, for example, the aoe trash swarms that are sprinkled throughout the 5 mans, raid instances (especially ZA), and a major feature of certain boss encounters. They’re usually so weak that even a holy pally can throw on some decent tank gear and tank them. But then, why punish the other tanks for not being paladins, and why punish their group/raid for not having a paladin tank or a holy paladin with decent tanking gear?
Andris
The idea was specifically to improve the capabilities of the tanks in roles that they currently falter in without disturbing the status quo, either by making one tank suddenly “better” at another tank’s primary purpose or by adding a bunch of new spells/abilities or talents to the already bloated tanking trees.
I also originally thought to add a slowing effect to a judgement, but realized that this would leave the paladin without the ability to slow a large group of mobs like a druid or warrior would get, and could even result in druids being the preferred aoe tank.
The idea with the spell absorb on holy shield was that it would be a seperate buff (absorbing a spell would eat that buff, not the holy shield buff). Yes, the paladin may have to make themselves vulnerable while waiting for the required massive nuke. But they’d at least have an option of dealing with it, just the warrior would still be better at it. Going from “bring a warrior or die” to “warrior is ideal, but paladin can work too”.
I find your mana regen from holy shield idea interesting, but the problem is, it takes a paladin a massive amount of mana to even hope to keep up with the single target threat of a warrior or druid who knows what they’re doing for the duration of a boss fight. Unless you put on a ton of spell damage gear - in which case you die in 2 hits when it finally is time to take some damage - 84 mp5 isn’t going to cut it.
Lets not fool ourselves into thinking that paladins aren’t anything other than light years ahead of the other tanks when it comes to 5 mans and trash pulls. Vonya and Kwane can attest to the many, many hours of paladin tanking I’ve done in both 5 mans and raids. Honestly, give them some decent gear and a monkey can tank a 5 man on a paladin, it’s the very definition of “EZ mode”. But that doesn’t mean they should become wet noodles when they’re not tanking, at least in my opinion. Giving the tankadin significant innate mana regen wouldn’t change the status quo in any area, it would simply make their lives easier in areas that are currently hair pullingly frustrating (to me anyway :P).
April 23rd, 2008
My concern with adding straight mp5 to combat expertise (besides making the talent description overlong, ala Sacred Duty) is that improves the paladin for all roles (healing, tanking, etc) to a possibly-unbalanced point. I’d hate to see something like the following build be dominant in early-to-mid healing ranges, for example:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=0550311050010000000005320130123320320005500000000000000000000000
With 800 stamina, that’s 80 mp5 in exchange for 5% crit (11% on holy light) and 35% of int as healing (~175 +heal?). Over a 10-minute fight, that would be 9600 mana. Also, the amount of mana required to keep up a threat rotation stays constant as gear improves, so it’s not clear to me that mp5 would need to scale with stamina; a base rotation would be (250+124)*0.85 ~ 318 mana per 10s (SoV+Judgement), or 160 mana/5 going out. Adding in Consecrates and the like will get expensive, of course.
Base mana regen for such a fight would be a Super Mana Pot/Demonic Rune rotation, or 1200+2400 every 2 minutes — 1800 per minute, or 150 mp5. Even just super mana pots would be 100 mp5 equivalent. Right now, you additionally need 135 mana per 10 to keep Holy Shield (Rank 1) up for when it becomes your turn in the fire (ala Void Reaver). If you need consecrate to generate threat, you’ll be in the hole either way, but with JoW right now, you can at least get steady-state with Seal of Vengeance/Judgement on secondary-threat fights. Adding a little boost and encouraging Holy Shield use when shadow tanking would be a nice benefit, but wouldn’t overpower a prot pally doing non-tanking things, like spamming Holy Light in gladiator gear.
It’s not ideal; you don’t generate nearly as much threat or get as much mana regen, much like it’s harder for a warrior shadow tank to generate threat due to rage starvation. It’s a little tougher for a paladin, but I think it’s okay for that to be one of the weaknesses of the class. Also, the 8 * 56 mana regen would count for a little bit of threat; about 425 threat per 10s if I’m counting it right…