Non-homogenizing Warrior Solutions

#0 - Feb. 26, 2009, 4:45 a.m.

I always hear GC referring to not wanting to homogenize tanks, and I fully agree. But I think that all tanks should be able to perform as well as eachother in most situations as well. To keep with not homogenizing the classes, I offer these suggestions for warrior tanks and ask for feedback from the community. Maybe we can think up a solution that Blizz would be happier with that still gives Warriors a distinction.

Enrage Effects:
The enrage system has a lot of potential and I see a lot of people mentioning this as well, so why not expand the enrage mechanic? Right now I can burn an enrage for a HoT. That's cool. What if I could also burn it for say, another Thunderclap or a reduced CD on a Shockwave? Or burn an enrage to make the next ability I use 5% more potent? (Buff up a Commanding shout on a health intensive fight, or buff up a shield slam every once in a while for a DPS race, buff a devastate to increase my damage reduction if I have a lot of melee, etc?) This could give us the potential of being a better tank by being more flexible without just giving us the abilities of other classes.

Concentration on Blocks/Shields:
It seems warriors are intended to be the block tanks. We put a lot of emphasis on our block values and our shields are often our best/most important piece of equipment, in my opinion. So keep the design focus on blocking. I think the dev team went in a good direction by adding things like critical blocks and damage shield. That's a great direction and it makes us feel distinct. Adding more on block procs would make the system seem spammy, so instead I think perhaps we could use the shields in a new way. Not sure exactly on where to go with it but it's a good hitch to start with. First thing that comes to mind is a talent that would increase your armor based on your block value or vice versa.

Or perhaps being able to remove your shield and lay it down as a barrier that would break a mob's LOS to you or break mob's AoE LOS to you. You would lose all the benefits of your shield while the shield was down (blocking, armor, stats, any abilities that require shields), but you could stand behind it if a mob was charging up a massive AE or spell, and perhaps even your fellow raiders could stand behind it with you. Then, when you wanted your shield back, you simply click on the shield in front of you and it pops back on. Cooldown starts when shield is retrieved, if you walk 5 yards or more away from the shield, it automatically retrieved (to prevent walking away from a shield and losing it).

I will add here as more ideas come to mind, but I wanted to throw this out to the community for suggestions and feedback.

Ghostcrawler

#43 - Feb. 27, 2009, 12:20 a.m.

We appreciate the feedback.

We don't appreciate insults from players who are emo because we didn't implement their suggestions. But they have been removed.

We are very happy with the mechanics we put into place for Prot warriors for LK. Long-term tanks still tell us that tanking as a warrior is night and day more fun than it was in BC. The talent tree is worlds better than it used to be.

We do understand there are some concerns about tanking parity, and some of these are more stat related than mechanic related. We have plans to improve warrior tanks where they are deficient.

Our stance is that in BC, the warrior was the MT. There are some guilds that fielded paladin or druid MTs and managed to do fine. However, we made the assumption that most fights were being tanked by a warrior.

That is not true in LK, where we assume you have one of four classes tanking. We want every fight to be viable with every tank. Now that word "viable" is a tricky one. I can't say "identical" because realistically it's not going to be identical. The four classes have different stats and abilities so inevitably some fights are going to be a little easier for one class than another. We are going to attempt to minimize the effects of that as much as we can. We don't want to see a guild with a druid MT suddenly hit a brick wall.

This gets even trickier when you are talking about the Ulduar hard modes. Some are going to be quite challenging and we won't be at all surprised to see guilds optimize as much as they can to beat those encounters. Some guilds might be able to swap in a DK for some fights because they think that gives them an advantage compared to a warrior tank. We're not really going to do anything to prevent that, but we are going to make sure that is not your only option.

If you go for the hard modes, you are going to be in for a challenge. Everyone will be able to see Ulduar, but not everyone is going to be able to beat those situations that offer the best loot. You all as tanks are going to have to be very careful and honest about admitting when you can't beat an encounter because you're group just isn't up to it and when you can't because class balance gets in the way.

Ghostcrawler

#47 - Feb. 27, 2009, 12:29 a.m.

Q u o t e:
That's fine. But there had better be fights that Warriors and Paladins have an advantage at, too.

That is only fair.

We don't sit down and say "Okay this is the paladin encounter." However, it just so happened that the two hardest encounter in Lich King were both dragons that breathed for a lot of burst damage. DKs with cooldowns and druids with huge health pools were great for that.

Now don't get me wrong -- all 4 tanks have managed both encounters just fine. But it probably leaned too far away from warriors and paladins.

If Malygos didn't breathe and instead swung very fast for smaller amounts per hit, then the block-based tanks would probably have had an advantage on that fight while the others had an advantage on Sartharion.

Ghostcrawler

#206 - Feb. 28, 2009, 12:56 a.m.

One small buff:

As I recently announced in the damage forums, we are going to allow rage generation while shielded (and also while hitting shielded targets).