Blade Barrier Mechanics are Punishing

#0 - March 12, 2009, 11:07 p.m.

The mechanics for Blade Barrier currently punish the player, instead of rewarding them - by this I mean that instead of being rewarded for having all of your Blood Runes on cooldown, the player is punished if they do not have all of their Blood Runes on cooldown.

Pre 3.1, this was (apparently) justified by the fact that Blade Barrier was obviously worth more, point for point, than equivalent tanking talents. However, now that Blade Barrier is only worth 5% mitigation, it is one of, if not the lowest budget tanking talents point for point - other tanks get up to 4% mitigation per talent point, or the talents come with another bonus, or both. Meanwhile, Blade Barrier is only worth 1% mitigation per point, and it is "conditional" mitigation - its uptime will vary depending on what, exactly, happens during the fight, and it may drop for long periods under certain circumstances.

I call the current Blade Barrier mechanics punishing very carefully. It is obvious that it will be assumed that Death Knights have Blade Barrier when taken into consideration for any difficult tanking role. However, in some situations that will not necessarily be a valid assumption with the current Blade Barrier mechanics. For obvious reasons, Blade Barrier will never be up for the pull of a boss, as it will require in most cases 4-5 global cooldowns to activate - it will require in any case a minimum of 2 global cooldowns to activate, and particularly in 3.1 this will incur a large threat penalty which Death Knights may not be able to tolerate. Many add tanking roles will have significantly lower than 100% Blade Barrier uptime, as the abilities most useful for gaining agro on a multitude of enemies require holding Blood Runes in reserve.

I suspect the primary reason Blade Barrier has not been changed is due to flavor, and a desire to avoid homogenization. I imagine that it is assumed that keeping Blade Barrier up is an interesting mechanic for Death Knights to balance. Simply put, it is not a particularly interesting mechanic. In "ideal" tank-n-spank circumstances, it requires zero effort and will have high uptime after the pull. However, in any situation where, either through fight mechanics, a string of avoided strikes, or player error, Blade Barrier falls or comes in danger of falling, the player has to make a choice. It is not an interesting choice, and either way the Death Knight loses - they can choose to either sacrifice damage and threat by prioritizing Blood Rune usage (punishes the tank and causes them to deal less damage), or sacrifice mitigation and prioritize Frost and Unholy Rune usage (punishes the tank and causes them to receive more damage).

Ultimately, flavor like Blade Barrier is nice to have. . . but only when it does not penalize the player for less than perfect play, or circumstantially cause them to be subpar for any reason, including but not limited to fight mechanics. Much like Protector of the Pack before it, Blade Barrier's mechanics currently exist for no compelling reason other than flavor. This needs to be fixed.

This does not mean that current Blade Barrier mechanics need to be scrapped entirely, however. Blade Barrier can easily be reworded to something such as: "Decreases damage taken by 5%. Whenever your Blood Runes are on cooldown, you gain the Blade Barrier effect, which ________." Some obvious possibilities for Blade Barrier bonuses include bonuses to Rune Strike, perhaps something which gives it a chance to proc off non-avoided attacks, or reduces the Runic Power cost.

Ghostcrawler

#66 - March 28, 2009, 6:59 p.m.

Q u o t e:
The problem I have with the choice is that you're not forced into sacrificing threat for a bonus to mitigation, you're forced into sacrificing threat in order to maintain normal mitigation.

I feel like you arbitrarily defining "bonus" versus "normal." If it increases your mitigation, that's something you want as a tank. If the cost of that mitigation is too high, then it may not be something you want. So far almost all DKs still seem to take it. We balanced the old version around the assumption that it was nearly always up too.

Q u o t e:
2) Blade Barrier - 5 ranks
Decreases damage taken by 1/2/3/4/5% and whenever your Blood Runes are on cooldown increases healing done to you by 5%.

That is an interesting idea, and is consistent with the Blood theme. We would probably go with all of that happening when your Blood Runes are on cooldown. We'll keep it in mind if DK survivability seems to fall behind.

Ghostcrawler

#161 - March 29, 2009, 7:51 p.m.

Q u o t e:
If you're balancing around the assumption that it's always up, why is it not passive?

I see where you are coming from, but that isn't the model we use very often. We balance around the assumption that priests cast Fort or that tanks are trying to generate threat. That doesn't mean the logical conclusion is just to make all of those passives.

One of the things we like about BB is it rewards the DK for using up those runes and not just sitting on them, yet you can use them on whatever you want like D&D or Vampiric Blood.

If anything, we'd like to have *more* active mitigation abilities, but nailing the cooldown and cost right is tricky. It is easy to get them into the realm of spammy at one extreme or saved for that critical moment (that may never arrive) on the other.