Cataclysm Balance Philosophy

#0 - Oct. 20, 2010, 9:37 p.m.

So, now that we have some data to interpret (not a lot, but some), I wonder if it is time to discuss the early stages of tank balance. When last discussed at any time of relevance (end of ICC), the relative balance was something like this:

Druid
Blood DK
Paladin
Warrior

In terms of the first raid tier of cataclysm, it seems like there is a similar paradigm in place:

Druid/DK
Empty Space
Paladin
Warrior

In most metrics, this is already true, damage taken, EH, and cooldowns. (Again, toolbox discussion can go elsewhere as it has been stated it is NOT part of tank balance, so please leave that out)

Druids have the highest health, DR and solid cooldowns on short timers.
DKs have solid health, DR, arguably the best cooldown set and tons of self healing with mastery.
Paladins have the capability to be block capped in tier 1 smoothing out damage intake, solid cooldowns.
Warriors cannot be block capped, are missing an equivalent DR cooldown other tanks have, and generally have the spikiest damage intake due to the nature of the critical block mastery.

In terms of Progression Raid Tanking I see no reason to bring a warrior as a main tank. I see PLENTY of reasons to bring them as an offtank on something that doesn't hit as hard.

The question is, with safeguard and vigilance being a unique buff, are warriors being DESIGNED specifically to be THE offtank? This seems to be a situation where "Hey, I bring a really cool buff, you are going to need me, not because you want to, but because of my buff." Isn't this what you were trying to get away from? Then you make vigilance unique and throw in no minimum distance safeguard and bam, warriors are THE offtank.

What about the warriors that would actually ENJOY being the main tank? I haven't enjoyed it for the entire expansion, because we have NEVER been the best or even an equal choice for main tank on any difficult boss in wrath. I would REALLY like it if there were situations where warriors could main tank again, and I wonder if its ever going to happen again.

Disclaimer: This is not qq about warriors not being the best tank anymore, please take that "rebuttal" elsewhere. This is also not about ego, this is about flexibility in raid comp, I wouldn't mind giving my druid main tank a break occasionally without hearing healers groan about having to heal a warrior. It really would be nice NOT to be the brunt of all tank jokes because of the design decisions being made...

#56 - Oct. 21, 2010, 5:42 p.m.

Q u o t e:
The whole "wait and see" attitude doesnt work with blizzard.

You can wait, but you will very rarely see.!

I am still amazed they pushed this horribly buggy and unbalanced patch live the way it is. Its ridiculous.

How do you put a patch live and then go Opps, ya sorry we didnt realize mages would be getting 110k + crits.

Think about it. If they let all these simple problems go live, (that should have been EASY to catch), what do you expect them to do about the difficult problems.

Q u o t e:
The devs are bad at taking feedback on this forum. If the feedback is something like, Thunderclap, compared to these other abilities, hits too weakly, GC says that we need to look at the whole picture.

If we provide more big picture feedback, you're saying that they should go item by item.

Q u o t e:
I would be on board with this, but they let the horribly unbalanced version we're looking at go live.

When you let things go to live that are unbalanced, why do you say that things will be different once they see the data from Beta raiding?

We've had threads and threads about why Shield Block doesn't work, which is relatively simple to explain--no feedback.

Warriors have waited a whole expansion for balance, and it hasn't come. Wanting to get things right for the new expansion before it starts isn't jumping the gun.

This quickly got off the topic of tank balance.