05-29-2007, 10:07 AM
Quote:I have rather limited experience in the end-game at 70. The furthest I've seen is one attempt at Magtheridon, and from my experience, Protection warriors have been perfectly capable off-tanks on all encounters so far. I can imagine that damage out-scales Protection warriors' mostly non-scaling threat at higher levels of content, however, and I'm saying that might be why your warriors have trouble off-tanking. It was in no way meant as a shot at your warriors. I wouldn't have thought that damage scaled enough prior to 2.1, but that's that.
I see. I want to clarify what I mean by off-tanking in the raid context. Simple off-tanking, which is to say taking an elite mob of level 71-73 and keeping it on the player and away from other people, is something I feel that all tanking classes, even paladins, can accomplish in the current environment. There are minor differences, but for the most part, they don't matter. Even against 73s, Shield Block isn't the key advantage it is on bosses, because these mobs just don't crush for that much, when they crush at all. What spike damage they have is easily absorbed by a well-geared player of any tanking class (even Paladins can reach the 13000-ish buffed health they need). It's when additional complications are involved that warriors start to suffer.
Take for example the Coilfang Fathom-Witch. One aspect of this particular trash mob is a tendency to mind control its tank, causing it to run around slaughtering DPS or healers. Two of these are usually present in a trash pull with up to three additional mobs. So that's five, and someone needs to act as an off-tank on each Fathom-Witch. Assigning one player to each job, that's seven tanking roles, which is a bit much to expect out of a 25-person raid. Instead, you can do it with five, assigning one player to hold two of the weaker-hitting other mobs - a druid is best for this with Swipe, but a warrior doesn't really have much trouble with TC/Cleave/etc., after all, the warrior's being hit.
One tank, however, has the job of being the off-tank on both Fathom-Witches - generating enough threat on both of them to both be second on the aggro list on the one which is actively being DPSed, and to be above the healers (which is more difficult than it seems when tanks are being hit fairly hard) on the second one, without the rage from being hit. Fathom-Witches also periodically deaggro their tank, so you can't have one player tank both from the start and have two off-tanks, either.
This off-tank could be a warrior, but this warrior would effectively have to generate the rage from doing so by swinging with a one-hander. Sure, he could TC some, but he doesn't get to use Revenge at all (since he's not being hit) and he has very little rage to work with. It's going to be a very difficult task to out-threat the DPS on one mob and out-threat the healers on another without being hit. A druid, however, can do it easily, by sitting there and swiping.
Now, the recent nerf to SSC has nerfed these mobs to the point where no one has to tank anything, just kite them around in circles while the raid burns them down. But the pre-2.1 Fathom-Witch was an example of an off-tank role which heavily favours the druid. I'm not saying the warrior can't do it. But owing to the warrior's threat-generation mechanic, and the fact that warriors don't quite have a move like Swipe, it's much easier for a druid to do. The warrior's going to find it hard, and stressful, and a mistake or two means people get shredded, whereas the druid pretty much can't make a mistake if Swipe is striking both mobs.
Let me give you another example from a raid encounter. In Al'ar phase 2, every time Al'ar lands, two Embers of Al'ar, small phoenixes with a fairly hefty attack, spawn next to him. Al'ar performs a whirl attack that inflicts heavy damage and a knockback when he lands, so no one can be close to him or the adds when they spawn. When the adds spawn, they hold still for about a half second and then streak off toward random players at approximately double run speed. They aren't snareable. The key is to get them tanked and then moved out of the raid rapidly, and that means picking up the adds before they get to that random player and kill them. Furthermore, Al'ar spawns heavily damaging patches of flame on the ground.
Warriors have very few options. They can't stand at the spawn point, or they are caught in Al'ar's knockback. The adds move far too quickly for a gun or bow shot to catch. The only thing that works on them is Intercept, but with the size of the room and the fact that Al'ar's location is not controllable, there's only a 35 to 65 percent chance, depending on where the landing location is, that the warrior will be able to intercept the adds before they dart off. Once they've got the add, they have to negotiate a minefield of flame patches to move the add into the correct position. Druids merely cast feral Faerie Fire and the add comes right for them, already in position. Again, this is a tanking role where a warrior just isn't the best choice. A warrior can do it, sure, but it's going to be harder, people are going to get hit by Embers more frequently, and the warrior may very well get destroyed by a flame patch that he stumbles into while trying to pay attention to all the other stuff he has to pay attention to.
Do you see what I mean? I'm not implying that warriors are getting magically destroyed on raid content, or that there's anything they can't tank if they really, really play well and execute perfectly. I am saying that in many situations, many nontrivial, raid-success-critical roles, Druids just have it easier, which improves the chances that the job is executed correctly over multiple iterations. It's merely the difference between a high-stress job rife with opportunities for crucial errors versus accomplishing the same task with a much smaller chance for error. I'd argue that's significant advantage.
Quote:I'm not trying to discredit you. You said you don't have a Protection paladin to do it, and I said I'm a bit skeptic as to whether or not it can succeed, though I'm leaning towards it being doable. Your comment implied you hadn't tried it with a Prot paladin.
It's been done many times before. For reference, it's Elitist Jerks' preferred method, and they kill him every week.
Quote:Now it seems that you're dead-set on me antagonising you, though. I really don't want this to turn into a fight.
It doesn't need to be a fight. But please, please, please accept that when I'm offering evidence like that which I've posted above, it's something that's been learned from wipe after wipe after wipe and empirically determined to be correct after trying every available alternative. I haven't once said that your own observations of druid vs. warrior tanking were wrong. I respect those observations. Please respect mine.