We love GC

Two things.

First,

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They just don't care, that's why they completely ignore us. They seems to work hard to balance everything except for Prot Warriors. Looks like they really don't care if we are the worst MT for Ulduar. I guess we will have to re-roll or have to live with it or just play another game.

This is the kind of thing that will get you banned. It does not contribute to the conversation. It does not discuss class mechanics or balance. It is not provable, it is wrong, and it is a waste of forum space. Post it in your class forum if you want to, but don't post it here.

Second,

If you believe your tank is somehow inferior to all the others, you need to offer something more than your word or your claim that it is a general consensus of the community. Because it isn't. This forum has plenty of threads on "My class is so inferior to the other classes at tanking." And many of them sadly don't go into much detail beyond that.

Every fight in Ulduar has so far been tanked by all 4 tanking classes and we haven't seen any situations where one class is at such a disadvantage that they are in danger of losing their raid or guild spot. We'll continue to keep a close eye on it though and make sure that through some clever new mechanic or combination of gear that nobody manages to trivialize the encounter when tanking with a particular class.

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You know another thing I wanted to add. You keep asking us to prove it to you GC and blizzard. Sorry to say but that is not our job to do so. We shouldn't have to use mods and do programs and do math calculation to show you something is wrong. That is your job. That is what you're paid to do. We tell you what we like and don't like, we tell you what we think is wrong or good. Your job is do find out if it's true or not, and do a proper test. Just testing to see if all 4 tanks can do it, is not a proper test. Seeing how much of a difference each tank has on each encounter is the proper way to test things.

That's not exactly how we view the process. We aren't asking the players to balance the game for us. We are however providing a forum in which players can discuss game balance.

We view it like this:

1) We do our jobs and come up with numbers.
2) Because we have a passionate and generally intelligent community, we provide an opportunity for the community to bring up concerns.
3) We read the concerns, talk about them among ourselves, and make changes if we think they are warranted.
4) Where the system starts to break down a little is when the community still isn't happy with step 3. Some players slip into a mode where they start posting numerous "Why haven't you changed this thing that we asked you to change yet?"
5) At that point, I will sometimes say essentially "We are happy with the way it is working. If you think we are missing something, please be very explicit on when and where that is occuring and show your math if necessary."
6) Some players basically aren't going to be happy with anything short of "Okay, we'll buff you." Much of the time that's not going to happen and those players might continue to be unhappy. Once they get into the content, maybe they'll realize things aren't as bad as they thought, or maybe they'll continue to be unhappy.
7) All that being said, we make mistakes sometimes. We change our design sometimes. We find bugs. None of that means that the system is doomed to failure and we should just turn over development of the game to the community.

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No I said that right now there is an imbalance and this isn't an opinion. It's a fact being proven in many threads with WWS and programs like Parri's thinktank and other people doing theorycrafts. How can so many people using so many different tools and all of the tools show exactly the same thing, that DK's have an advantage over the other tanks be wrong?

It's always an opinion. Usually what is debated is how objective or subjective the opnion is. Data do not create facts. Data usually do not prove anything. At most, data can suggest trends or fail to disprove a hypothesis. But really the more salient point is that it is always going to come down to our opinion. Either we feel we need to make a change, or we don't. I think you would be less frustrated if you got out of this mode of "What do we need to do to get this change made?"

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It's more likely that blizzard isn't really paying attention on how fights were tanked and only looked at if it was possible. That is what my posts have been about in this thread. Trying to open blizzards eye that we are not complaining that we can't do the fight. We are complaining that it takes alot more work for us to do it then a DK. Not just hard work for us, if it was just having me to work twice as hard I wouldn't mind. But the problem is that it requires the raid to work twice as hard with me tanking. Putting more stress on the raid. Why in the world would I want to do that to my raid, when I can let our DK tank who is just as good as me and has as much experience tanking as I do (he was our warrior MT pre WotLK).

The danger of that kind of logic is that other players (and us) get this message: Blizzard appears to disagree with me and I can't understand how that can be, so I am going to assume they just don't understand how their game works. :)

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Fair enough GC, I don't really question your process, I just question some of the tests you do. Cause like it's been already 4 post where again you say that all 4 tanking class were able to tank the bosses in Ulduar and so it's fine. But as we have said it's not an issue if we can or cannot tank. We know we can.
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this right here is the problem people keep having. its not going to be as fair and balanced as people want it to be.

the goal seems to be for all 4 tank classes to be able to tank all content. blizzard says that is the case. you can view videos of guilds on the ptr using different tanks to tank the bosses. unless i missed something of course and the people are using dks as mts and only dks. if dks are twice as good as warriors and the majority of guilds are still using warriors then there is no problem. thats what people are failing to grasp and the discrepency isnt anywhere near that large. its only a problem when guilds have to use a dk for mt.

also, i hope that blizzard not only looks at the damage taken, cds, threat, avoidance, and other tanking numbers. i hope they look at the the breakdown of which classes are mting which bosses. over large pool of raids you would see each tanking class between 20-30%. if one class is dominating a boss then they should step in which is what i think they did with sarth 3d for dks and druids.

We don’t want to make all 4 tanks exactly the same. This is why I shy away from answering questions such as “Should I be within 2% of what another class can do?” It is rarely that simple. It comes down to whether a guild that has a paladin MT feels like it has an excessive handicap. Do good guilds feel like they need to replace their paladin MT in order to progress? I understand that the definitions of “excessive” and “good” in those last two sentences are very important, which is partially why we want to leave them vague. It’s not enough for you to tell us that your guild is going to replace you, because we have no way of knowing if your guild leader knows what they are talking about or if you are a good player or not (or ultimately if you are just exaggerating to try and make a point).

To use an example, it felt to us that druids and DKs had an advantage when tanking Sartharion that was unacceptable (to us). We wanted that encounter to be experienced more as it was when a warrior or paladin tanked it (and plenty of them have). So could warriors tank that encounter? Of course. Was it too much of a burden where we felt guilds might consider replacing their tank? Probably. Does that mean every time a tank is swapped that it’s a problem with the encounter? Of course not. It could just as easily come down to a problem with the group, the players or just personal preference.

Will there be Ulduar fights where some tanks are at too much of a disadvantage? We don’t think so given the PTR testing, but it could certainly happen. And when it does, we’ll respond. We are likely to respond with nerfs since we want the content to be challenging and not trivial, but it depends on the specific situation.

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Yet every time a skilled and respected character suggests a logical recommendation WITH numbers to back it up, you say our numbers don't match yours and are therefore wrong.

If you have concerns, make them. Then consider your job done. We are not going to turn over the responsibility and burden of balancing WoW to the community. You are welcome to provide feedback, and we are grateful for it. If you feel like your feedback isn’t taken seriously, then that’s your prerogative (though for what it’s worth, it isn’t true).

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And also reading that got me mad, because in a sense then it means unless we have some math calculations in our post or thread or have some WWS report or whatever we can't discuss about balance?

You can discuss balance. That is what these forums are for. I think when players get frustrated it’s because they have it set in their minds that they are going to somehow “win the argument” and force us to make a change. It doesn’t work that way.

In this case our opinion is that the 4 tank classes are close enough. We may change our minds given enough arguments to the contrary, or more likely, once we see more people in Ulduar.

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I think in a way, blizzard devs are being a little schizophrenic.

All tanks are viable for all encounters <--> some tanks are better for some boss fights.

All tanks have good tools <--> some tanks have better tools for different situations.

I wouldn’t describe it as schizophrenia, but that things in this game are rarely absolutes. The community often wants absolutes. Player say “I want to make a tank. Who is the best?” Or they say “How much dps does a Fire mage do?” The answers are almost without fail “It depends.” Our goal is not to make all dps, healing or tanking identical to the sixth decimal place. Our goal is to make tanking, in this case, close enough so that you can choose whichever class you want as your MT and OTs (or maybe even MTs depending on how you roll). We are nowhere close to a mechanic like Shear, where if you don’t have a particular class tanking, you just can’t do it (and even in that pretty extreme case, other classes did do it).

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The system hasn’t broken down. That’s just the way it works. Lately there have been a lot of companies that have laid off workers. These people did nothing wrong and they have a right to complain. The choice is often made because keeping this people will cause the company to go out of business and let everyone go instead of just a few. Often, in life, we are forced to choose between two incompatible rights.

The trick is not to make yourself feel better by demonizing a right choice that can’t be made. The weak player who is totally under geared and keeps dying in PvP is correct when they say its frustrating. This is a complaint that could be easily demonized and dismissed. Blizzard didn’t dismiss it and eventually found a solution to an impossible problem. Most problems are real, the question is can they be fixed or are we smart enough to fix them without making matters worse?

Good point. I guess in this situation, our answer to the issue of “It’s frustrating when I see an imbalance and Blizzard won’t address or fix it” is not often going to be “Okay. we’ll fix it.” That does not mean it is invalid for you to feel frustrated.

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I'm curious, has there ever been a time when the players were listened to. I have only been playing three years but I dont recall one. I say this not about tanks but any class. I don't recall any. It does seem to me that the players have a much better record of pointing out problems. Of course I understand the developers not taking players word for this. Job security..........would you want your boss to know your customers knew more about your product than you?

There are probably thousands of situations where we listened to the players. Most players who have been posting here for very long will realize that. One problem is that players are quick to bring up when they are right but downplay when they are wrong. DKs and druids posted a lot before LK about how they weren’t going to have the tools to tank effectively. There were whole threads about how “The new crushing blow is the unblocked hit.” Paladins were sad that they lacked a critical block. Yet the community has now come around to think that if anything, block might not have enough of an impact. (Note that we didn’t change any of the mechanics in the interim that would have invalidated their early conclusions.) Hunters and warlocks and Ret paladins were convinced they didn’t have the tools to be competitive in PvP. We have since made PvP nerfs to all three of them.

But all of that really isn’t the point. We have millions of customers, and they make heroic efforts to understand and predict what is going on in the game. It is awesome to see that level of passion and devotion and we benefit greatly from it. But that doesn’t mean we are ever going to turn over balance of the game to the community. There is almost no point to the “Listen to us because we’re always right” threads. If you have concerns, bring them up. If we discuss them and find we agree, then we will likely make changes. That is going to be the process.

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But as we have seen in BC and pre BC, when you have one tank being superior to others in some encounters it creates a trend, and guilds start to use that tank for everything on progression fights. Because in their minds if he's better in that encounter then he should be better for the rest. Though that is not your fault. And it's up to us to change their mind. But that is where some of us, are asking for some help from you guys.

The difference is in BC our design was “Warriors should be the best MTs. Period.” And even though that was the case, the other classes could tank just fine in almost every situation. So it makes sense that when our design is “All four classes can be the best MT” that the differences should be even smaller.

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We need to question the fundamental premises which we base the numbers on. For instance you often talk about making the game more challenging, yet you haven’t backed up that statement with a reason. The game should be fun, challenge can add to that fun, but there becomes a point where challenge becomes too difficult and the fun is lost. That’s what I fear you are doing with the spirit nerf.

A message I feel like we have heard loud and clear is the current raid content is not challenging enough. We have addressed that, hopefully in such a way that doesn’t totally kill raiding for players who were fine with the current difficulty level.

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People want the holy grail of balance, yet those same people decry homogenization. How can you have one without the other? A HoT vs a Heal will always have different benefits and they will always be better in different circumstances. True balance cannot exist until everyone has exactly the same abilities. You can post numbers supporting one side or the other, but until you can say definitively what the right choice is the numbers are virtually useless.

Making sure balance doesn’t trump class differences or vice versa is in itself a delicate balance. :)

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4 burst mitigation cd's > 1 burst mitigation cd.

That's not so hard to understand, now is it? When the death knight is asking for a cd from someone else, the paladin is asking for his 4th cd. Unfortunately for paladins who do not like being the off tank, the first cd the death knight receives may well be the specific off tank talent you are cramming down our throats.

Your math doesn't prove anything IMO except that 4 is a bigger number than 1. Druids had, what, 1 CD in LK but their health, armor and avoidance were so high it didn't matter. I promise we could make a tank with 12 CDs that was ineffective or a tank with 50% passive DR and no abilities at all that was the best in the game. Now maybe you're arguing that health, mitigation and avoidance are all close enough that it comes down to cooldowns. But there are plenty of threads in this forum arguing that the health, mitigation or avoidance discrepancies are way too large. It's subjective, which is why I don't find your "inescapable, inexorable" logic as conclusive.

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While my math and logic are painfully easy to understand, what I DON'T understand is WHY you are hell-bent on making paladins the most attractive off tank and the least desirable main tank? Would you please explain that? And do not deny it, because it is an inescapable, inexorable conclusion. You stubbornly refuse to give us more tools to main tank (tools that you have given other classes), yet you do add tools to help us make other classes better main tanks.

I am denying it. Sorry.

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BTW: I am not trying to claim that paladins can not main tank Ulduar bosses. It is clear that they can; but allowing a paladin to main tank bosses employing burst damage mechanics will make it much more difficult to succeed. A paladin will require a much greater degree of communication, coordination, and will require other classes to spec in a certain, specific way to ensure the availability of needed burst mitigation cd's: cd's that a death knight specced for them will already have built in.

We're in the realm of some kind of fuzzy evaluation. The "much greater degree of communication" is not something that is going to be easy to measure. Is it a liability? Will it get you kicked from a raid? You may say yes, but other players may say no. Will buffing paladins make them better? Probably. Will it make them the class that everyone uses to replace their current MT? That's a risk.

I still predict, as many players have suggested, that the most common tank in Ulduar is a warrior. Does that mean warriors are too good? Not necessarily. It probably means that it's tradition to tank with a warrior and a lot of guilds have warrior tanks. Does that mean we nerf warriors until tank representation is 25% across the board? DKs outnumber warriors (and all classes right now). Does that mean if there are more than 25% DKs tanking Ulduar that they are OP? Should we only count speed clears? Best guilds?

What I'm getting at is that the goal is fuzzy and the test for whether we have met that goal is also fuzzy. Since paladins can tank anything, it's just going to come down to a judgment call on our part about how much of a delta along any vector is too much. Providing anything from antecdotes to simulation output to WWS parses will help inform that decision. But you're never going to be very effective with an attitude of "We've proven it, now change it."

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The thing is, by adding a fight like Hodir or Mimiron, you are essentially adding a fight like Illidan with Shear or actually more like Archimonde with Fear or Azgalor with Mana burn (I believe it was him in Mount Hyjal that would that).

We don't think Hodir or Mimiron are at that level. But again if we find that DKs (or anyone) make those fights too easy, then they will be dealt with accordingly (and probably in a way that brings many tears).