#0 - Feb. 13, 2009, 11:06 p.m.
This is the second in a pair of discussions focusing on tanking topics that a group of us (Satrina, Xav, Hypatia, Jamor to name just a few!) have been discussing. These posts are the distillation of those discussions, and are intended to be the starting point for discussion within the tanking community on these subjects in a peer-review manner. While they are focused on the rage-based tanking of warriors, the same problems are present for druids to some extent. In any case, discussion from all is welcome!
In this topic, we look at the root of many problems: rage. In many cases, tanks are faced with a situation where there is effectively infinite rage because of how hard a boss hits, while in others such as tanking a 5 man instance, rage is a scarce commodity and is to be rationed. As was noted by many people in the comments of the Heroic Strike tanking topic, rage is in fact the root of the problem with Heroic Strike.
There is a commonly-held opinion that infinite rage is not a problem. This is false for several reasons, the foremost of which is that with inifinite rage scenarios come rage starvation scenarios. Infinite rage scenarios make Heroic Strike spamming mandatory, while rage starvation scenarios take it out of the picture entirely. With a significant portion of a warrior's threat output currently tied to Heroic Strike, this causes a fair bit of variation in the warrior's threat output. This causes problems with threat output. If warrior output is balanced around the boss fight and Heroic Strike spamming, then the rage starvation scenario severely handicaps a warrior. If it's balanced for a lower rage flow situation, the warrior's threat output is too high (not that many warriors would complain) on the boss fight. It also makes for a binary effect where the warrior is completely unconcerned with rage, or the warrior is primarily focussed on rage conservation. Rage is intended to be a managed resource, just as mana or energy, but not to the point where it is your sole concern. Infinite rage removes an entire aspect of the strategy of playing a warrior, and replaces it with the repetitive and boring task of hammering an extra key over and over again (or binding it to mousewheel, or using the very bad idea of macroing it to everything.) There is no skill to be found in Heroic Strike spamming, and not many people actually enjoy queuing up two abilities on every GCD.
Also noted by several in the commentary of the Heroic Strike tanking topic, there is a fair argument for this to have been the first topic instead. This is true but as also noted, we know that Blizzard has Heroic Strike at least on the radar now, and we know that mechanics-altering things like changes to the way rage works are much less likely mid-expansion rather than between expansions. Even so, this discussion of rage mechanics hopefully sets the stage for future changes and some of the ideas presented represent relatively small changes in the way rage is generated, perhaps small enough to be possible with minimal ripple effect.
So what are we looking for here? This discussion comes from the other side of the Heroic Strike discussion. Simply, if you can prevent infinite rage scenarios and return to that point where having a full rage bar is a sign of a bad tank, then Heroic Strike is just fine as it is.
Part 1: Normalising Rage Intake
Proposed is an adjustment to the rage intake formula that normalised rage on damage taken based on the proportion of your total health the hit's damage was, combined with rage on avoidance.
Currently, the formula for rage intake is R = 2.5D/C, where C is 320.6 at level 80. That gives us 4 rage for a 500 point hit, 8 rage for a 1k hit, 47 rage for a 6k hit, and 156 rage for a 20k hit. This is where the main problem is. You're either on fumes or you're always full. There isn't much currently that is in between. Ulduar and future content is only going to make the always-full part even more common. The rage formula could be adjusted to make infinite rage less common in coming content but that reduces performance in previous content even more, which is already a continual problem with warrior tanks as gear improves that does not need to be further compounded.
Working from the basic rotation of SS + Rev + Dev + Dev with no rage reducing talents, a warrior requires 55 rage over 6 seconds to maintain this rotation, or about 9 rage per second. Given a two second attack timer, 18 rage per attack will maintain rotation. Anything beyond this causes rage to accumulate which may be used for other more expensive abilities, or for queuing Heroic Strike to shed excess rage. Rage reducing talents serve as a TPS boost for warriors who take them.
