A few ideas about the current tank meta, Hard enrages, stacking str gear, etc.

[Bashum]

Hello all, I had a few ideas pop into my head, and I was wondering what everyone else thought.

Currently as we all know, tanks are expected to stack STR accessories for the harder fights, and push DPS, otherwise run the risk of running into a hard enrage, and not meeting dps checks.

What I would like to see, is far less hard enrages, and more soft enrages in raid encounters if you will. For some reason, I have always detested the hard enrage mechanic. It really seems like a lame way to say "sorry, you've played perfectly up until this point, but you've failed the gear/dps check, and not beaten this fight the exact way we've intended."

This especially puts the hurt on the Paladin, as they currently have no real way of matching the dps of the other two tanks.

Rather than a hard enrage mechanic, if at say, 12 minutes, the boss begins gaining a 10% stacking damage buff every 30 seconds, or every minute after that, you may well see a case where a raid that has optimized for survivability, with a bit less dps, may still be able to complete the encounter. On the flipside, your tanks could still gear for dps, and beat the encounter before the soft enrage begins. This just offers more options on how to play.

I know the developers have indicated they want to change the damage formula in some way, many of us theorize that it will somehow base your damage partially on your Vitality. Thematically this doesn't really make sense to me, and seems like a bandaid fix.

Instead of that, how about the following:

War: Fell cleave potency reduced slightly. However, additional potency is added based on the amount of health you are currently missing. Perhaps up to a cap of 50%. So fell cleave would hit the hardest when you are at 50% health. Thematically this just seems to fall in line with the overall vision for the warrior, as a facetanking berserker, who just takes the hits and keeps dishing out the pain.

This would mean that a warrior with 16,000 base hps, who is missing half of their health would do less damage with fell cleave than a 24,000 hp warrior also missing half of their health.

Keep in mind, these are just rough ideas, the actual formula would need to be worked out based on what theoretical max health is achievable with current gear.

DRK: I'd love to see their high damage ability also cost them their own health. In this vein, you would not want to avoid vitality, as you need enough to safely use this ability without dying. It would need to do enough damage to be worth stacking up the VIT to safely use it.

PLD: keep them as the lowest damage, but make them the highest mitigation, hardest to kill tank. When this is paired with the idea of a soft enrage, rather than a hard enrage, a paladin becomes a perfectly viable option, as he would likely be the only tank able to survive several minutes into a soft enrage mechanic, and complete the fight.

Thoughts?

[Arannon]

Heres the problem...if PLD's become the highest mitigation then the other two tanks aren't tanks anymore. Why take a Warrior or Dark Knight if the Paladin is "The Tankiest"?

The tanks have to tank equally well, and the balance be around their "Other" stuff...

Warriors make great offtanks BECAUSE their DPS is so high...

Dark Knights are slightly behind that but their damage WHILE tanking is also about the same as when not...they're also the best at handling magic damage

Paladins have things like Clemency and Divine Veil and Cover, and...well...personal opinion but they're clunky as hell...

The devs need to balance all of THOSE really.

[Arannon]

That and make Parry and vitality worthwhile for tanks to want more than just "The bare minimum" of...

[ArdorGrey]

If you fail a hard enrage you *haven't* been playing perfectly. It's often far more about knowing your rotation and how to modify them for the phases of the fight than it is about gear. Gear just makes it easier over time.

I don't think I speak for the majority of tank payers,(many of whom have all but admitted they just want to stack vit and sit in front of the boss until the other players bring it down) but I actually far prefer knowing my class inside and out to just knowing what sort of goofy dance routine each particular fight demands to survive.

Also paladins are already the hardest to kill in primarily physical fights. they definitely feel way too reliant of physical damage to shine though since their shield and thus both of their shield cd's are completely physical reliant.

[Bashum]

I don't think I speak for the majority of tank payers,(many of whom have all but admitted they just want to stack vit and sit in front of the boss until the other players bring it down) but I actually far prefer knowing my class inside and out to just knowing what sort of goofy dance routine each particular fight demands to survive.

I'm not advocating that, however I would prefer if the tank meta focused more on trying to survive and hold aggro, rather than being a DPS in plate as much as possible. I mean right now it's so easy to hold aggro it's not even a challenge.

[Syzygian]

snip

So tired of seeing people say this. Can you provide exact citations of people demanding to sit in front of the boss and do nothing?

Also PLD is not tankiest even necessarily in physical fights. There has been testing that suggests war and even moreso drk parry as much if not more than PLD blocks+parries combined, and that passive mitigation is really the only area where PLD has an advantage, by like, 1%, to be generous.

[Ralvenom]

War: Fell cleave potency reduced slightly. However, additional potency is added based on the amount of health you are currently missing. Perhaps up to a cap of 50%. So fell cleave would hit the hardest when you are at 50% health.

No. Just no.

DRK: I'd love to see their high damage ability also cost them their own health. In this vein, you would not want to avoid vitality, as you need enough to safely use this ability without dying. It would need to do enough damage to be worth stacking up the VIT to safely use it.

Yeah, except...that sounds terrible. I can just imagine getting smacked with a 12k hit (boss crit) after you did this attack and dying.

PLD: keep them as the lowest damage, but make them the highest mitigation, hardest to kill tank.

They basically are this already. No one uses PLD because their MT dmg is awful right now, even with the 3.1 improvements. Also, since there's very little physical dmg on Alex Savage.

[Brannigan]

Even on the super early clears usually at least one tank is wearing melded accessories rather than raw STR. This was the case for my group and most of the first videos I remember seeing.

Rather than a hard enrage mechanic, if at say, 12 minutes, the boss begins gaining a 10% stacking damage buff every 30 seconds

Boss uses Cascade, kills everyone but the tank.

They basically are this already.

Please stop spreading the myth of paladins having the best mitigation

[Bashum]

Yeah, except...that sounds terrible. I can just imagine getting smacked with a 12k hit (boss crit) after you did this attack and dying.

Well that's sort of the point isn't it? If you're using all STR gear, and use this before a tank buster, you probably deserve to die.
Look, I get that perhaps my ideas aren't exactly in line with what your vision is for the future of the tanking meta in this game. All I would really like to see is some compelling reasons to go for vit, other than an incredibly unimaginative change to the damage formula which would factor in your vit stat.

[Ishkar]

I would actually appreciate the meta to change from "everyone is a DPS" back to the traditional roles. I want tanks to be focusing on tanking and healers to be focusing on healing. For those tanks and healers that want and can pull off extra DPS during a fight, feel free! I just don't like how it's forced upon us in the current meta, with DPS checks being as tight as they are. Why do we even have fending accessories...?

I'm aware that with some gear upgrades for your entire party, it's possible for your tanks or healers to drop the priority on doing damage, but by that point it'll probably also be easier to tank/heal, which ironically gives you more space to deal damage... So I don't see this as a good argument.

I'm just hoping that they introduce content where tanks and healers are challenged further in ways that apply to their role, instead of how things are currently focused around finding where and how to deal as much damage as you can. Thordan HM is definitely a step in the right direction for me.