Who will tank in TBC?

[Brista]

(Originally written in response to an interesting discussion on the EU Warrior board)

I found it very hard to get accepted as a Druid tank last summer

I think a lot of guilds rely on pigeon-holing druids into healbot roles currently and I don't think it's a culture which will vanish with BC

Someone has to do the healing and if one looks at the census data for most realms you'll see something like 12% paladin/shaman, 10% priest, 7% druid. So if your guild reflects the server population and you need approx 30% of the raid to heal then everyone who can heal must heal

Now not everyone works like that - most guilds can dip under the 30% ratio and allow a couple of the healers to spec for dps or bear tanking but it's a factor in every guild

Someone has to heal

So if you want in the Expansion to have paladins and druids tanking; shamans shadowpriests cats retrinoobs and a moonkin dpsing you need to have a large amount of your guild from those 4 classes since those 4 classes will also have to cover all the healing in addition to all these new roles

I think what will happen is that people will judge more on a case by case basis. Not "we need more Warriors" but "we need more tanks" and the 10K armour 11K life 41 points in Prot Paladin is going to look a helluva lot more appealing than the 6K armour 8K life dps warrior who says he can tank a bit if he really has to

So it will be about gear and spec just as it always has been

Despite each faction getting an extra heal-capable class I predict a healer shortage

So if you are a Warrior wanting to tank you may need to be in one of the guilds that everyone wants to join rather than the guilds that pick up the leftover players the top guilds dont want

Now how a guild handles gear will have a lot to do with what its players do with their hybrids. If a tank ring is Warrior priority and an AP/Crit ring is Hunter/Rogue then Druids in that guild will heal. Maybe there will only be one or two druids in that guild, but they will heal since healing gear is the gear that's available to them

I'm casually considering the idea of an all-healer guild - only recruiting shamans druids priests and paladins. I've seen other people mention the concept and I think it may well become moderately popular. I won't bore you with in-depth reasons as to why I think it can cope with end game but just point out that for most healers healbot roles isn't what we want to do, taking it in turns to be on healing duty with everyone else in the guild will be appealing and will let us explore the other facets of our characters

But apart from such guilds the vast vast majority of tanks will be Warriors simply because there will be many Warriors around for the amount of guilds the server's willing healers can support. That doesn't mean that every Warrior who wants to raid tank will get a chance to do so, still less that every Warrior who wants to raid will get a chance to

[Artega]

Since I haven't had time or ability to closely monitor upcoming changes to the game via TBC, I might not be able to grasp the point of this post, but it seems the OP isn't really stating anything new.

From what I understand, the new Paladin "taunt" decreases the aggro other party members have, rather than increase the aggro the Paladin has, which I don't really see as any different functionally other than the fact that something will already be beating on a non-tank before the Paladin gets the opportunity to use their "taunt" (unless the taunt functions differently from Taunt; that is, it adds a static amount of aggro, which would reduce Paladin tanks to Tauntadins), and it's my understanding that anything that isn't a tank that's getting mauled by a mob in a raid setting is going to be dead well before the Paladin has time to react.

Barring that, itemization doesn't favor Paladin tanks; their tier sets and non-set tier gear generally have Spellpower and MP5 stats, and have lower STA in favor of INT, SPI, and they lack Defense entirely. I haven't had time to sift through the chaff in the WoW forums to find out how exactly Defense Rating, Resilience Rating, Critical Rating, and all the other new terminology relate to the present stats of Defense and Critical Strike, nor do I have time to check for updates to Paladin talents and skills, but I don't think Paladins could ever be realistically good tanks without a good amount of +DEF and an obscene amount MP5, since Mana isn't as effective as Rage for extended fights.

Now, the OP says that a 41-point Protection Paladin will generally be chosen over a DPS Warrior for tanking situations; isn't that pretty logical to assume? Granted, a 31-point Protection Paladin might not be chosen over a DPS Warrior for a tanking position in the current game, and maybe that's what the OP is trying to get across - that Paladins will actually be capable and maybe even preferred for tanking in TBC over DPS Warriors. But isn't that how it should be to begin with?

So if you are a Warrior wanting to tank you may need to be in one of the guilds that everyone wants to join rather than the guilds that pick up the leftover players the top guilds dont want

I'm assuming the OP means "So if you are a DPS Warrior wanting to tank" in this instance, since I don't see how a Prot Paladin would be chosen over a Prot Warrior in most situations, given that Rage is better than Mana for tanking. Obviously, there will probably be some encounters in the new instances (and maybe some old ones will be redesigned) so that a Paladin will need to step up to the plate, and possibly/probably the same for Bears. Frankly, I'd enjoy that; I've always thought it was pretty moronic to have three classes capable of tanking, yet only use one of the three extensively for end-game tanking.

[Tuftears]

Oddly enough, the Avarice Alliance has a healer surplus. I've seen raids with 8 priests, or with 9 druids, though paladins are usually short at around 3-5. We also have a decent number of both feral and resto druids.

Surfing Thottbot beta items suggests that future paladin sets and loot may include some tankiness, if only as one of several options. I wouldn't discount paladins as tanks.

The short of it is, get people you enjoy playing with, then work out your strategies around that, with an understanding that the healing, tanking, and DPS bases still have to be covered. It does no good to pontificate that druids should tank if you don't have druid players with an aptitude for tanking. Excellent players will shine through and be able to make the most of whatever classes they play.

[Luminon]

(Originally written in response to an interesting discussion on the EU Warrior board)

I found it very hard to get accepted as a Druid tank last summer

I think a lot of guilds rely on pigeon-holing druids into healbot roles currently and I don't think it's a culture which will vanish with BC

Someone has to do the healing and if one looks at the census data for most realms you'll see something like 12% paladin/shaman, 10% priest, 7% druid. So if your guild reflects the server population and you need approx 30% of the raid to heal then everyone who can heal must heal

Now not everyone works like that - most guilds can dip under the 30% ratio and allow a couple of the healers to spec for dps or bear tanking but it's a factor in every guild

Someone has to heal

So if you want in the Expansion to have paladins and druids tanking; shamans shadowpriests cats retrinoobs and a moonkin dpsing you need to have a large amount of your guild from those 4 classes since those 4 classes will also have to cover all the healing in addition to all these new roles

I think what will happen is that people will judge more on a case by case basis. Not "we need more Warriors" but "we need more tanks" and the 10K armour 11K life 41 points in Prot Paladin is going to look a helluva lot more appealing than the 6K armour 8K life dps warrior who says he can tank a bit if he really has to

So it will be about gear and spec just as it always has been

Despite each faction getting an extra heal-capable class I predict a healer shortage

So if you are a Warrior wanting to tank you may need to be in one of the guilds that everyone wants to join rather than the guilds that pick up the leftover players the top guilds dont want

Now how a guild handles gear will have a lot to do with what its players do with their hybrids. If a tank ring is Warrior priority and an AP/Crit ring is Hunter/Rogue then Druids in that guild will heal. Maybe there will only be one or two druids in that guild, but they will heal since healing gear is the gear that's available to them

I'm casually considering the idea of an all-healer guild - only recruiting shamans druids priests and paladins. I've seen other people mention the concept and I think it may well become moderately popular. I won't bore you with in-depth reasons as to why I think it can cope with end game but just point out that for most healers healbot roles isn't what we want to do, taking it in turns to be on healing duty with everyone else in the guild will be appealing and will let us explore the other facets of our characters

But apart from such guilds the vast vast majority of tanks will be Warriors simply because there will be many Warriors around for the amount of guilds the server's willing healers can support. That doesn't mean that every Warrior who wants to raid tank will get a chance to do so, still less that every Warrior who wants to raid will get a chance to

As Warlock posted here, the Dire Bear ability will grant +450% armor and +40% health in the expansion. Add another +20% health from the Heart of the Wild talent and you've got one very survivable tank.
Warriors on the other hand will probably have better itemization again, but gain only 5% stamina, 10% armor, 20 defense and a bunch of % block from talents. With their new abilities warriors in my estimation will have superior aggro generation though.

So in conclusion Bear and Warrior tanks have become diffrent enough from eachother to allow blizzard to build encounters for both. Wether we'll see encounters that require a Bear tank's survivability is up to the game designers. My bet is there will be, if only for the sake of variety.
[edit] And of course the reason blizzard will be able to design encounters for druid tanks is that they're itemizing for them now. Most guilds pre-expansion don't have a druid with proper tanking gear.

[Concillian]

Since I haven't had time or ability to closely monitor upcoming changes to the game via TBC, I might not be able to grasp the point of this post, but it seems the OP isn't really stating anything new.

After reading through what you had to say this is painfully obvious. Reading this sentence after reading your post, it shoud read very much like "I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm going to talk anyway."

The other classes that are "tanking hybrids" are getting very significant buffs to their shortcomings in TBC, in both talents and itemization. All the points you brought up are totally irrelevant given the TBC changes.

[Trien]

Healer shortage seems to always be a problem...

Perhaps perversely, I've stuck with a feral build, which is granted, more PvP oriented, but which has almost all the talents for a bear tank build. Because I've liked to round out almost all aspects of the druid, I've acquired a pretty decent tanking set with which I could tank a large majority of the mobs in the game (full raid buffs with no consumables puts me at about some 9300 hp and 14.6k armour. Could get more AC at the expence of HP, but I prefer this setup, but will mix and match as needed). We took a preliminary shot at Patchwerk last week just for kicks and heck, I probably could've sat there eating hateful strikes without having to use a flask. But alas, it was not to be because... healers are always in short supply.

Is this ever going to change? *shrug* I'm not getting my hopes up...

[Pantalaimon]

So in conclusion Bear and Warrior tanks have become diffrent enough from eachother to allow blizzard to build encounters for both.

My experience in beta with everyone mostly in greens/blues is that druids make better tanks than warriors. This is only doing the five-mans, though. They seem to hold aggro better (although that's more a function of skill than anything), but they're definitely easier to heal. *shrug* YMMV, but I *prefer* druid tanks, because chances are if a druid is heart-set on tanking they definitely know HOW. The same cannot be said for warriors, because some just like to beat things up :shuriken:

[Warlock]

I already somewhat prefer my Druid for 5-man tanking (considering Swipe's ability to easily hold several mobs to be more important than a Warrior's active defences in current content).

I wouldn't take the Bear armour buff as gospel just yet, even though I was the one that posted it here. I've seen a few posts reporting changes to several item's armour for both plate and leather and one reporting an unusually high dodge per AG rate for Bears. I suspect Bliz is kicking the tires on a few different approaches.

I'm expecting that all three tanking classes bring enough to the role for tanking players with characters of each class to be desirable as main tanks for 5-man groups and to be valued in the role in raids as well. The tank/DPS hybrid gets the best active defences and the widest range of tanking skills, the tank/heal hybrid gets the best ranged threat and doesn't need to build rage at the start of fights, the tank/heal/DPS hybrid gets just a tiny handful of tanking skills but the best raw physical survivability.

[The Gnu]

The role of druids in a raid have always been quite simple to me: raid balance. Missing a warrior for the back rotation on the horsemen? A druid can handle it fine. Lacking dps on Loatheb? Let a druid or two go nuts with starfire or catform dps.

The reason they're most commonly used for healing is also simple: they can do things with healing that no other class can mimic. I wouldn't say the same about tanking or dpsing.

[lemekim]

My experience in beta with everyone mostly in greens/blues is that druids make better tanks than warriors. This is only doing the five-mans, though. They seem to hold aggro better (although that's more a function of skill than anything), but they're definitely easier to heal. *shrug* YMMV, but I *prefer* druid tanks, because chances are if a druid is heart-set on tanking they definitely know HOW. The same cannot be said for warriors, because some just like to beat things up :shuriken:

Well, actually it's much easier to tank as a Druid, period. They generate so much more aggro than Warriors, and have better tools for tanking multiple mobs, that even Druids who know little about tanking can do better than most Warriors.

By the way, given the static threat of Warriors versus scaling threat of Druids, don't be surprised if you find Druids (or even Paladins) as the main tanks in many guilds. They might have slightly lower mitigation, but at least they will be able to hold aggro against classes that will be doing double the DPS of a level 60 character (thanks to the static threat, Warrior threat increase won't come anywhere near that mark).

[Kevin]

Well, actually it's much easier to tank as a Druid, period. They generate so much more aggro than Warriors, and have better tools for tanking multiple mobs, that even Druids who know little about tanking can do better than most Warriors.

By the way, given the static threat of Warriors versus scaling threat of Druids, don't be surprised if you find Druids (or even Paladins) as the main tanks in many guilds. They might have slightly lower mitigation, but at least they will be able to hold aggro against classes that will be doing double the DPS of a level 60 character (thanks to the static threat, Warrior threat increase won't come anywhere near that mark).

Warriors are getting a scaling threat talent with Devestate though. At least that is how I've always viewed it. 50% + X damage and does additional threat. I don't think the additional threat is a static value based on the number of sunders, I think it is more like say earthshock for a shaman. Earthshock right now does 2 threat per damage. I figure devestate will do say .5 threat per damage per sunder. So 2 sunders you get 1 threat per damage. 5 sudners you get 2.5 threat per damage. .5 was pulled out of my arse, but based on the limited reports I've read (and the wide range of how effective it is for aggro) a model like this makes sense and would let the deep prot warriors, the ones built to tank not be out paced in threat becuase they will be able to scale it better as well.

[lemekim]

Warriors are getting a scaling threat talent with Devestate though. At least that is how I've always viewed it. 50% + X damage and does additional threat. I don't think the additional threat is a static value based on the number of sunders, I think it is more like say earthshock for a shaman. Earthshock right now does 2 threat per damage. I figure devestate will do say .5 threat per damage per sunder. So 2 sunders you get 1 threat per damage. 5 sudners you get 2.5 threat per damage. .5 was pulled out of my arse, but based on the limited reports I've read (and the wide range of how effective it is for aggro) a model like this makes sense and would let the deep prot warriors, the ones built to tank not be out paced in threat becuase they will be able to scale it better as well.

I have seen no numbers to support this claim.

"and additional threat for each application of Sunder Armor on the target"

The description seems to be pretty clear that it causes additional aggro for each application of sunder armor, and it doesn't even say if it has any base aggro beyond that of the damage it does. While it would be nice if it scaled with damage that it does warriors desparately need something that scaled - nothing in it's description, my personal experiences or accounts of other people show that this is possible the case.

[Pantalaimon]

snip... the tank/heal/DPS hybrid gets just a tiny handful of tanking skills but the best raw physical survivability.

Yeah, because we all know how well that works<_<. You could say that about current WoW; they have best survivability but worst aggro control, and look how often we let them tank. As Lemekim has alluded to, the most important trait of a tank, imho, is to hold aggro. In 5-mans, that's on multiple mobs, in raids it's normally on a single mob. I'm sure nearly any healer would agree, it's much easier to heal a tank that has a little less mitigation but will glue everything to him.

After a little more beta playtime, I am actually quite concerned that warriors might become dps first, tanks second if you can't get a druid. Running AQ40 and naxx with 20-30 high sixties, warriors were really struggling to hold aggro - whereas we couldn't pull aggro off our two fuzzytanks unless we were specifically trying.

[Artega]

To be honest, I was trying to get some questions about how Devastate works answered on the official forums before my subscription lapsed, but this was during the time where the entire first three pages got scrolled every thirty minutes under the tide of whines about TM being moved to Protection, so I never got a good answer (and it was probably likely no one short of the blues had the answers.) Finding out if the threat scaled was one of them, though given my PvP stance, not one of the important ones:)

I was also looking to find out if the damage multiplied with each Sunder stack, so that a target with five Sunders on it already would take 250% + (15*5), or 25*5/35*5 for the higher ranks. It doesn't sound unreasonable to me, and it would certainly fit the bill of "Devastate", since you'd be unloading all that damage on something that has its armor substantially lowered. I don't think there'd be many situations in PvP where you'd have something survive long enough to get a full stack on it (well, besides flagcarriers and solo combat and possibly bears), but even with two Sunders on it (which is pretty much normal for anything I fight), you'd toss out 100% + 15*2, which isn't bad when you consider the low Rage cost and Sunder refresh.

I'm hoping that since TBC is in Beta now, someone will be able to answer those questions for me.

[Warlock]

*snip* they have best survivability but worst aggro control, and look how often we let them tank. *snip*

I'm surprised at that attitude - in my experience Druid tanks have very high aggro generation and survivability varying with gear level (a bit better in good blues, a bit weaker in AQ gear, substantially weaker in MC, BWL or Naxx gear). My Druid has given full prot warriors a five sunder head start on mobs and still pulled off them without taunt.

Back on the thread subject, Druid beta tanking apparantly just took a hit - ILOTP is down to 4% per proc and consumables and weapon procs are no longer permitted. My take is that ILOTP needed the nerf (and may need to go further) but I'll be sorry to miss potions.

[Tal]

My Druid has given full prot warriors a five sunder head start on mobs and still pulled off them without taunt.

That amazes me. I'm arms/fury and if I've got five sunders headstart I've never had a mob pulled off me. Are you sure your tanks are using the other skills available to them? Lazy tanks rely only on sunder to hold aggro...

[Trien]

I don't have exact numbers, but from what I remember from those who worked out the mathematics behind druid threat, a well geared druid can have higher sustained threat generation than a warrior, and I believe a better threat:rage ratio, with controllable burst threat being worse than a warrior due to the bear's slow (2.5s) attack speed.

Druid threat is based completely off physical damage, ie. damage done from maul for the most part. So having 5 sunders up on a mob, while giving the warrior agro during the placement of sunders, also greatly increases the amount of threat a druid generates per hit as well. A maul crit on a fully sundered mob from a raid-buffed tank druid can hit well in the 1000+ range, and if I remember the numbers right, a 1000 damage maul from a druid with Feral Instinct (+15% bear threat) is worth something like 6-7 sunders worth of threat from a warrior with Defiance. And on raid mobs, typically a bear tank has more rage than he can dump with maul, so he'd probably be spamming swipe in the meantime and still be able to non-stop maul every attack swing.

Downsides to druid tanking... though the bear can be a great physical damage sink, it does take in general more damage than a warrior due to lack of blocking, parry, and crit avoidance from a lack of defense, so will require more healing overall.

[bonemage]

It is worth mentioning that druids in feral gear very often have more agility and crit than warriors. Crits are great for threat generation. Most warriors focus on what their biggest strength is while tanking, which is mitigation. I do think druids should get more chances to tank, and it looks like Blizzard is addressing the biggest hindrance to this, which has been itemization.

[lemekim]

To be honest, I was trying to get some questions about how Devastate works answered on the official forums before my subscription lapsed, but this was during the time where the entire first three pages got scrolled every thirty minutes under the tide of whines about TM being moved to Protection, so I never got a good answer (and it was probably likely no one short of the blues had the answers.) Finding out if the threat scaled was one of them, though given my PvP stance, not one of the important ones:)

I was also looking to find out if the damage multiplied with each Sunder stack, so that a target with five Sunders on it already would take 250% + (15*5), or 25*5/35*5 for the higher ranks. It doesn't sound unreasonable to me, and it would certainly fit the bill of "Devastate", since you'd be unloading all that damage on something that has its armor substantially lowered. I don't think there'd be many situations in PvP where you'd have something survive long enough to get a full stack on it (well, besides flagcarriers and solo combat and possibly bears), but even with two Sunders on it (which is pretty much normal for anything I fight), you'd toss out 100% + 15*2, which isn't bad when you consider the low Rage cost and Sunder refresh.

I'm hoping that since TBC is in Beta now, someone will be able to answer those questions for me.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...=47140111&sid=1

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic...=8161&p=28

In short: Devastate seemingly only adds damage for each sunder; the small bonus aggro it has (around 1/5th that of a sunder) does not change, regardless of how many sunder applications are there on the mob.

This bonus aggro may or may not be affected by weapon damage, but because it's so small, for all intents and purposes that is irrelevant.

As for druid "burst aggro"... Don't forget that they now also get Mangle, and Lacerate as a rage dump well. And all their abilities scale with AP, so even swipe now hits for something like 250 on a mob in TBC.

[Warlock]

That amazes me. I'm arms/fury and if I've got five sunders headstart I've never had a mob pulled off me. Are you sure your tanks are using the other skills available to them? Lazy tanks rely only on sunder to hold aggro...

It was while specifically testing for relative threat. We used Stone Guardians (durable, not dangerous, able to check relative threat generation without a whole raid group present) and took turns trying to pull off the other, I posted my results on here a while back. I asked him to hold aggro as best he could but don't know whether he used his full range of skills, I was concentrating on counting mauls and seeing whether the mob turned. This was before the current Shield Slam so I don't know whether I'd still be able to do the same.

In raids it's much harder to pull, simply because rage from autoattack tends to be rather lower than the rage available to the current tank. I have pulled by accident even so (while meleeing in bearform as a backup in case the tank died), though never off our MT's.