Four Ways to Die - why the Tank Meta feels "off".

[Ralvenom]

As a (former) Prot Warrior whose class was ruined by Active Mitigation, I am intimately familiar with it. WARs have it, DRKs have it (a little less), and PLD doesn't really have it at all. It is a design that works for some classes/jobs, and for WAR and DRK, I think it functions very well.

But the point is that they aren't using it.

Apparently, you went and forgot how it works. Or you hated how it worked for prot warrior (and therefore didn't understand how to use it for prot warrior). Either way, there is no active mitigation for warriors or dark knights in this game. If you think there is, you need to go back to WoW and play a Monk, Blood DK, or Prot Paladin sometime.

inb4 you try to tell me Inner Beast is active mitigation...It's not. Sorry. Not the way SE implemented it to work.

Not this old canard again. Having more HP does decrease the burden of healing, assuming a rhythm in which the healer caps off the tank and then does something else (usually DPSing). A higher HP total means the healer has more time for other tasks, whether DPSing, avoiding mechanics, or healing other members of the party before needing to refocus attention on tank healing. That makes the healer's job (healing) easier.

That's not how that works. It NEVER even works that way in MMORPGs where all healers do is heal (like WoW). Unless the meta was changed so that having a massive health pool was all tanks did (in which case, healers would have to have infinitely regenerating mana pools), then there's literally no reason for increasing vit over increasing str. All it does is make you a sponge that soaks up the healer's mana.
Don't believe me? Ask a healer how fun it is to heal a full vit tank in any savage run. Their answer? It's not fun at all.

On my DRK, I go from 12796 HP with STR accessories to 16240 just with i170 Fending. That's almost 4k right there (and I'm not VIT spec'd either). Surely i190 or i200 Fending accessories would provide more.

Wow...good for you. Talk about vit when you actually are in i190, i200, & i210 gear. You know, the gear people use to tank Savage in...

[Deezee]

And as an aside, you're also underestimating how much HP VIT actually provides (which is also common whenever someone says VIT doesn't help the healer). On my DRK, I go from 12796 HP with STR accessories to 16240 just with i170 Fending. That's almost 4k right there (and I'm not VIT spec'd either). Surely i190 or i200 Fending accessories would provide more.

I'd gain 129 VIT if I swapped (4 melds and 1 210 slaying); I'd lose 171 STR in the process. I just swapped 35 STR to 35 vit to test, and I went from 16609 HP to 17326. (717 HP gain divided by 35 equates to about 20.5 HP per vit.) I'd gain 2644.5 HP (3361.5 if I swapped from STR stats to VIT stats, but then I'd be losing 206 STR compared to what I'm currently running) over what I had if I had BiS 210 fending, which isn't even enough to free up a single GCD.

[SpookyGhost]

inb4 you try to tell me Inner Beast is active mitigation...It's not. Sorry. Not the way SE implemented it to work.

It's as close to active mitigation as you can get in this game. If tank stance is actually required, it can generally mitigate every cleave a boss will throw at you. While not actively mitigating all damage, it does mitigate something universally outside of tank busters, which is generally missing from the other tanks (outside of using the extended length of a CD to clip cleaves). It's also affected by GCDs, as nearly every GCD you use as a WAR gives you a stack of Wrath/Abandon and it used to be that fights were tuned tight enough that every GCD mattered. A prime example would be early T11 or early T13 WAR MT. You can even look at something as early as 2.1 WAR T5 MT. Now, instead of our mitigation coming from GCD to GCD, we're concentrating on our damage (which also comes from GCD to GCD).

In contrast, active mitigation gives tanks abilities that are used frequently, but affect their long-term survival in borderline fights. A skilled tank is the one who continuously makes choices that reduce the amount of damage they take, or reduce the amount of mana healers spend upon them and the raid. Unskilled tanks given the same abilities will use them at the "wrong" time, or at suboptimal moments that place a larger load on the healers and the rest of the raid, and can lead to a wipe on progression content.

- http://wow.gamepedia.com/Active_Mitigation

So while IB and WAR's whole mechanic system isn't spot on for Active Mitigation, it is about as similar as you're going to get in this game, and I kinda wish the other tanks had followed in a similar line to allow for more engaging tanking fights since atm every fight needs to be tuned so that all tanks can tank it.

[Ralvenom]

So while IB and WAR's whole mechanic system isn't spot on for Active Mitigation, it is about as similar as you're going to get in this game,

I think the phrase "Close but no cigar" applies here...

and I kinda wish the other tanks had followed in a similar line to allow for more engaging tanking fights since atm every fight needs to be tuned so that all tanks can tank it.

So, you want homogenization, which ruins that "class expectation fantasy"? Nah, had that in WoW; it sucked. It ruins all the uniqueness of a class.

[SpookyGhost]

ISo, you want homogenization, which ruins that "class expectation fantasy"? Nah, had that in WoW; it sucked. It ruins all the uniqueness of a class.

That wouldn't be homogenization, homogenization would be literally giving everyone a stacking mechanic that worked exactly like WAR's. You could easily differentiate how they got the mitigation but ideally every tank should mitigate the same % damage and deal the same damage. Otherwise you end up with our current problem and that problem will likely never be fixed. So if everyone could mitigate damage as quickly as WAR can, we'd see more frequent damage that needed to be actively mitigated from GCD to GCD in one way or another, which would lead to a more proactive meta rather than one that involves the thought process of "Oh, the tank buster is coming *press button* ok back to rotation".

I don't really have a problem with the current meta because I... don't really... care too much to be honest, I'm far more interested in encounter design than actually class design, but regardless I think that the only true solution to the current disparity is to bring damage numbers (intake and outtake) to the same level for all 3 tanks, differentiate how they deal and mitigate it, and spread them out further with utility (but not so far that you HAVE to have this jobs utility to clear this fight at this gear level).

It's a weird problem. I'm not heartily interested in solving it since SE will do whatever they wish to do and if we don't like it we stop playing the game. I'd even go as far as to say if you don't like the current meta you'd probably be better off switching to a different game as it would take great overhauls to fix it.

[Ralvenom]

Ok, I misunderstood. I can get behind that to some degree.

However, I still would maintain that some tanks be better at some tasks than others. I still want PLD to be "Physical Mitigation Tank", DRK to be "Magical Mitigation Tank", & WAR to be "Big Scary Barbarian". I could understand making their output/input more in line; but you still would be better off with a PLD on some fights, DRK on others -- depending on type of dmg. I think that kind of uniqueness needs to stay. The basic lvl (or percentage) of mitigation/dmg should be more in line, I can agree with that. And no one should feel subpar because they prefer PLD or WAR or DRK playstyle.

[Alahra]

-snip-

Ah, I mistakenly assumed you were talking about going from full STR to full VIT. Obviously, Fending provides hardly any benefit compared to pentamelded accessories and that explains why your number seemed low to me.

[Jpec07]

Apparently, you went and forgot how it works. Or you hated how it worked for prot warrior (and therefore didn't understand how to use it for prot warrior). Either way, there is no active mitigation for warriors or dark knights in this game. If you think there is, you need to go back to WoW and play a Monk, Blood DK, or Prot Paladin sometime.

inb4 you try to tell me Inner Beast is active mitigation...It's not. Sorry. Not the way SE implemented it to work.

I played all of them, actually, and quite well. Active Mitigation was a disaster for Prot Warrior and Guardian Druid. It ruined the classes by trying to make them fit into a mold that was incongruous with the original design. But if you insist on hurling baseless, off-topic invective at me, be my guest. I'll not respond to it anymore.

That wouldn't be homogenization, homogenization would be literally giving everyone a stacking mechanic that worked exactly like WAR's. You could easily differentiate how they got the mitigation but ideally every tank should mitigate the same % damage and deal the same damage. Otherwise you end up with our current problem and that problem will likely never be fixed. So if everyone could mitigate damage as quickly as WAR can, we'd see more frequent damage that needed to be actively mitigated from GCD to GCD in one way or another, which would lead to a more proactive meta rather than one that involves the thought process of "Oh, the tank buster is coming *press button* ok back to rotation".

I don't really have a problem with the current meta because I... don't really... care too much to be honest, I'm far more interested in encounter design than actually class design, but regardless I think that the only true solution to the current disparity is to bring damage numbers (intake and outtake) to the same level for all 3 tanks, differentiate how they deal and mitigate it, and spread them out further with utility (but not so far that you HAVE to have this jobs utility to clear this fight at this gear level).

It's a weird problem. I'm not heartily interested in solving it since SE will do whatever they wish to do and if we don't like it we stop playing the game. I'd even go as far as to say if you don't like the current meta you'd probably be better off switching to a different game as it would take great overhauls to fix it.

I could get onboard with this. Would gladly take a bastion of physical defense that cannot be moved over what PLD currently has. And I feel like OP Warrior DPS is the reason why they were so prominent in early A4S clears (though this DPS tanking paradigm lends very closely to that).

[Ralvenom]

I played all of them, actually, and quite well. Active Mitigation was a disaster for Prot Warrior and Guardian Druid. It ruined the classes by trying to make them fit into a mold that was incongruous with the original design. But if you insist on hurling baseless, off-topic invective at me, be my guest. I'll not respond to it anymore.

Changing the way HOW a class plays is NOT breaking them. Get over it. All tank classes were just fine at Active Mitigation. WoW actually had them (mostly) on the same level, really.

The issue here is, it cannot be said that SE has all the tank classes on the same level.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I'd gain 129 VIT if I swapped (4 melds and 1 210 slaying); I'd lose 171 STR in the process. I just swapped 35 STR to 35 vit to test, and I went from 16609 HP to 17326. (717 HP gain divided by 35 equates to about 20.5 HP per vit.) I'd gain 2644.5 HP (3361.5 if I swapped from STR stats to VIT stats, but then I'd be losing 206 STR compared to what I'm currently running) over what I had if I had BiS 210 fending, which isn't even enough to free up a single GCD.

Going off of i150 crafted Vit/Str Accessories makes a mess of things.

The gap between Full Fending and Full Slaying at i210 is roughly 5k HP (20695 vs 15672 for a Midlander with Vit 35).