3.3 is the Age of the Warriors

Q u o t e:
Keeping the mantra of "Bring The Player Not the Class," yet keeping the four tanks different is a quite a quandary. Equipping different tanks with different tools and skills to keep them distinct leads to X tank being better at X fight than the other X tank when the fight happens to require a certain a mechanic or gimmick. It's something that's difficult to properly balance in order to keep the status quo in check.

Those are both goals (group flexibility vs. tank heterogeneity) and they are partially at odds with each other, but so are many of our goals for WoW (say simplicity vs. depth).

We understand that there is a segment of the community that wants to see all tank numbers virtually identical to each other on all fights. We see requests for DKs to block and druids to parry and for every class to have an equivalent snap-aggro move for single target and AE fights, etc. That's just not the direction we want to take the game. We want your group to do things a little differently if you have a bear instead of a paladin tank. We want that if you've played a DK throughout LK to have to learn and adapt to class differences if you choose to reroll a warrior. We want the numbers to be close enough so that a group that runs with tank X doesn't feel at a serious disadvantage on specific fights. But we aren't trying to make everyone the same.

Q u o t e:
GC, you are basically saying you want tanking niches if you want groups to change their strategies and tactics depending on what tank is tanking.

That's fine.

But what's not fine is if you have a tank (Warrior) that is either the worst or second worst at all aspects of tanking. How can you have tanking niches and maintain balance when you have this imbalance?

I don't know that I would say we want tanking niches. I ultimately am agreeing with what you're saying, but once we say "tanking niches" players have visions of the DK who parks outside of Icecrown until boss 4, 17 and 31 (yes, IC is that big).

I totally agree that no tank can be the worst at everything. What you have to remember though is that "everything" is generally defined as the current raid content. Coliseum isn't a large raid. If there are 5 bosses and 4 tanks then it seems that even in the best case that someone might be "the best" on 2 of them and everyone else is "the best" on 1. (And honestly, we don't design raid encounters with that goal in mind -- they have enough constraints on them already.)

Again, the goal is "close enough" and the mushiness of that definition is intended. For some groups, having a tank that is "5% harder to heal" (whatever that means) is acceptable and perhaps not even detectable. We just need to avoid the extreme situation where the guild that feels gimp because their MT is a paladin (or whatever) and paladins have a lot of liabilities on the current raid content to the extent where that player is getting replaced on more than just a couple of fights. (And I should add by knowledgeable raid leadership, and not just the Naxx pug guy that read on the forums that bears are the best tank and so only accepts bears.)

Q u o t e:
For instance, every tank:

1) Have a massive damage reduction on a 2 minute cooldown
2) Have a second emergency button on a 2 minute cooldown
3) Have a high single target threat generator
4) Have a high multi-target threat generator, possibly through glyphs (by multi-target, I mean something that hits 2-4 targets)
5) Have a snap AE threat generator
6) Have a sustained AE threat generator

I understand why that might be appealing, but we also look at the downside of them all playing exactly the same. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that paladins didn't even have a single-target taunt. Once everyone had all of those abilities, I could see it going to everyone needing the same ways to debuff the boss or everyone needing a self-heal or a way to convert damage into resources or a targeted (DnD) and a persistent area (Consecrate) threat generator.

Choosing paladin vs. warrior isn't supposed to be a cosmetic choice, like choosing male vs. female is. Class choice in WoW is very meaningful, perhaps the decision that has the most impact on your play experience. We try and protect against anything that can erode that.

Q u o t e:
What magically do you believe makes the discrepancy disappear or decrease in Coliseum as opposed to Ulduar?

Because the effectiveness of a tank is solely dependent on the encounters she is trying to tank.

Imagine we had one boss and warriors were the best tank for that boss. Conclusion: tank with a warrior or go home.

Imagine we had 15 bosses, and the DK was the best tank for 10 of those. Conclusion: bring a DK.

Imagine we had 4 bosses, and each tank got their ideal fight when they were the best. Perhaps the conclusion would be that everyone is equal. More realistically, players would focus in on which was the tank for the hardest fight or something. :)

Coliseum is relevant, because the bosses don't generally pound the MT for 40,000 damage in one swing. The debate about which is "the best" tank to bring for those encounters is going to look a little different than the debate was in Ulduar.

Q u o t e:
So you're shooting for encounters that are "easy" enough for it not to matter what tank you bring? If every encounter was like Northern Beasts I don't think there'd be as much complaining, but NB is also way too easy to be considered the next step in raiding. What are the hard modes going to be like?

You'll know in a few weeks. :)

We aren't trying to make the fights easy necessarily, but we are trying to challenge the tanks and the raid in ways other than just pounding the tank as hard as we can such that cooldowns (from the healers even) and big heals become the only things that matter. Those are fine for some fights, just as having a tank and spank once in awhile is fine. The problem with Ulduar is that too many of the fights came down to these huge hits such that other parts of tanking (and healing) became pushed to the side. For example, nobody is as worried about being a mana sponge these days because mana isn't generally limiting and tanks can generally be destroyed in two hits.

Q u o t e:

Quoting for hypocrisy; this goes against the mantra of "Bring the player not the class". And I don't think smaller guilds are quite fond of having to recruit and gear one of each tank.

Nah. Too many of you are trying to solve the tanking puzzle in one of two ways: find the best class to tank to make things easier for you, or bring one of every tank so that you have the bases covered. Neither of those is our design.

Our design is that you can pick an MT and 1-3 OTs (depending on the content) and be able to beat the encounters, assuming those players have a reasonable amount of skill and gear. The balance has to be close enough that no matter which class you pick as a tank that you can still make progress. Generally that works out okay because players have beaten the content with all four tanks. There are some situations, especially on hard modes, where choosing one tank makes the encounter much easier than on others. We're okay with it being "easier," but we don't want it to be "much easier" and we don't want it to happen too often or always favor the same class. If we thought we had nailed tank balance we wouldn't still be tweaking numbers and talents.

For many of you though, learning the encounters, learning to coordinate better or getting better gear will improve your chances far more than picking "the best" tank class. That's not true of every guild, but it is probably true for most of them.

Q u o t e:
Press the button when the boss casts his ability. Tanking is skillful.

If there was no skill in tanking then a lot more players would have beaten Yogg +0 by now.

It may not be rocket science (though I don't think rocket science is rocket science these days), but there are definitely good and bad tanks. I've seen 'em. :)

Q u o t e:
I don't think the community would be so upset if the differences between tanks were flavor.

Flavor for player A is I look like a human while the other guy looks like a bear.

Flavor for player B is my AE threat is pulsed while yours is on a cooldown.

Flavor for player C is I am better at AE fights while you are better at single-target fights.

We try to inject flavor into class design, but for many players it will come down to numbers. If simulations suggested that Frost mages did 2% more dps than Fire mages, you'd probably see 75% or more of PvE mages as Frost. What I'm saying is that for some of our players, probably for some of you guys even, anything more than "I look like a bear" isn't flavor, it's a potential imbalance.

Q u o t e:
GC, you/the devs and the players seem to be on very different wavelengths when it comes to tanking class design. To us, "flavor" is Death and Decay versus Consecrate, the Rune system versus a Rage system, diseases for one tank and bleeds for another, flashy holy spell effects for Paladins versus simple and visceral animations for warriors. "Flavor" is NOT Protector of the Pack versus Defensive Stance--the only difference, *only* difference, is that one is 12% and one is 10%.

I disagree with your rage and DnD examples though (in the sense that those are "acceptable.") I see posts all the time saying that DKs are at a disadvantage because being hit doesn't give them more resources or warriors are at a disadvantage because they can't generate enough threat when they avoid too much or are not the primary target. Paladins have DnD envy because the latter can be targeted, while DKs are jealous of Consecrate because it generates so much threat and has no cooldown. A lot of DKs argue that their lack of a snap aggro ability (like Shield Slam) is a huge liability, and warriors argue that they can't AE tank effectively with cooldowns for TC and SW.

So for you, having the same health, armor, avoidance and cooldowns might be enough. I'm not convinced that would close the door on the debate though. I think it would just shift.

Q u o t e:
Consecrate has a cooldown, it doesn't have... times where it's not ticking compared to DnD.

When its duration is the same as its cooldown, it doesn't really have a cooldown. :)

Q u o t e:
When you say "Bring the player not the class" and emphasize this and then go about making it so by taking steps and implementing code that supports this, your logical goal dictates that you are fundamentally trying to achieve equality, thru simplicity, between different classes with the same roles. In essence, you are trying to make the class defining uniqueness nonexistent. The end result is the loss of game mechanic differences and the persistence of only cosmetic differences.

Not really. We're just saying pick whichever MT class you want and you'll be able to beat the encounter. We don't require you to have a specific class to beat a specific fight. Some players originally imagined that guilds had to have all 4 tanks on their roster so that they could swap in say the DK on magic fights, because they were advertised as magic tanks at the time, a role we later decided was ill-conceived. In fact, we decided the whole notion of a 25 (or 10!) player raid keeping 4 tanks around for particular fights was ill-conceived, so we decided choosing any of the 4 tanks as your main and off tanks should be sufficient to beat the encounter. And for the most part, it is.

Now if a particular class makes a fight too easy, especially a hard mode, we're liable to do something about it. The typical example used is when a DK on Vezax didn't need to kite him, which made the encounter much easier. DKs offtanking Malygos sparks also made the fast kill easier, but that didn't cross the line for us.

Q u o t e:
The tanks are no more diverse now than they were in 3.0. There are still two very clear choices for tanks like 3.0 and 3.1. How can you reconcile your goals in this atmosphere? You have some very clear haves and have-nots all the time, can you really hope to balance things without a little fudging on the hetero factor?

You're right, our tanks are no more diverse even after 3.0 -- most of them are warriors. :)

Q u o t e:
I've been my guilds main tank for four years now, and despite changes to the class, and the power of some of the other tanking classes, I still comfortably MT most fights for our guild. There's a few reasons for this - firstly, buffs. Me being able to tank the main target means that I keep sunder up myself (meaning the rogues and DPS war don't need to reduce personal DPS to get it up), and TC and demo get applied while I'm on it. Occasionally Trauma goes up when I'm playing with UA, once again taking Mangle out of the druids' paws.

Who tanks what fight really comes down to what your guild and raid is comfortable with. My guild knows I'm reliable, they've seen me work for the past four years, and as a raid, things work pretty smoothly, as people can more or less predict what I'm going to do. Threat is far from an issue, I tend to be comfortably ahead of most of the DPS, and vigiliance whoever's closest, it really comes down to survivability.

I think Ironbars' situation is typical for an awful lot of guilds. They will only switch MTs if they think changing classes will outweigh everything they give up (including the player's reliability and history). It happens, but it's vastly overstated.

Q u o t e:
At what point will Blizzard decide that tank balance in regards to mitigation and health is safe enough to leave alone and focus on actually making all the tanks fun to play? I don't know about you, but I'm not driven to play spreadsheet wow, I'd rather be immersed in the actual gameplay, not the math behind it.

Going to quote Avelyne too. However, we also know that it's true that for some players, the math is what's fun. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's not the entire game either.

Q u o t e:
Yes, I know full well that more EH and more mitigation is better, but GC's comments seem to indicate that they're balancing tanks around the assumption that as long as the worst tank can still take on the encounter, because a guild that has access to the "best" tank is always going to switch to the best tank anyway, whether it's a Paladin, a Druid, or even a Warrior.

That's not what I was trying to say. Guilds that have access to the best players are the *least* likely to switch out their tanks. Because they know the player brings a whole lot more to the table than the class. This is why warriors have more hard mode kills than all other tanks, and perhaps even all other tanks put together. Because ultimately who you choose as your MT isn't typically the gating factor on whether you can kill the boss.

Like I said above, we don't consider the situation perfect or we wouldn't keep tweaking numbers and abilities. But there are degrees between perfect and horribly broken.

Q u o t e:
Why would I MT a boss, when i could just put our prot paladin in instead and save my healers the trouble from gouging their eyes out? The problem hasn't been fixed, only redirected.

That's a great question, because in reality guilds only rarely swap out their MT from fight to fight. Again, we're talking about huge numbers of players, so some do, but the phenomenon is exaggerated on the forums more than we actually witness. Groups are either very stubborn (a distinct possibility) or the difference doesn't amount to that much in the long run.