Objective Considerations about the new tanks in ShB! Discuss :)

[JohnSeal]

Why you say the GNB have the worst kit for personal mitigation? Nebula is the same as Vengeance and sentinel, camouflage has high parry rate and 10% dmg reduction. Then HoS it’s soooo good 15% dmg reduction on a 25sec cooldown like the War Raw intuition and only this 2 tanks have this extra skill with such a short cooldown. Am I missing anything? :P

Drk is totally revamped and bye bye mp management, I agree personal defences wise it’s not optimal at all but TBN is amazing for TBs in savage fights with a around 25k+ shield.

I did few calculations with all tanks openers and they are so close to each other and the WAR still wins only because of IR. GNB has 2 dots that deal 1350 dmg over time + 270 from No mercy. The PLD is 595 dmg over time from Goring, in overall more powerful but you need a full combo for that.

As I said earlier I am happy for my PLDs friends (:

[Kalise]

Why you say the GNB have the worst kit for personal mitigation?

Parry is shit therefore Camouflage is bad. Parry has even been nerfed down to only 15% DR to boot.

HoS is literally the weakest active mitigation skill. It's only 15% DR. Raw Intuition is 20% DR, TBN is 25% shield and Sheltron takes the cake with being 20% that scales up to 30%+ DR.

Aurora is a HoT which means it's only useful for fluff damage.

The only mitigation skill that GNB has that is actually good, is Superbolide because it allows for the same mechanic cheesing as Hallowed Ground, but with a 1 minute shorter CD (At the cost of your entire health bar and 2s duration...)

I did few calculations with all tanks openers and they are so close to each other and the WAR still wins only because of IR. GNB has 2 dots that deal 1350 dmg over time + 270 from No mercy. The PLD is 595 dmg over time from Goring, in overall more powerful but you need a full combo for that.

The game isn't about openers though.

It's about who can best capitalize on burst windows due to stupid things existing like Trick Attack as well as bosses becoming untargetable due to phase changes or various attacks they use. Which makes burst damage result in higher DPS (Since, that's the case with Stormblood. WAR outperforms other tanks only because burst damage is king even though on paper, PLD and DRK can deal more sustained DPS)

2 DoTs that last 15/30s and a Gnashing Fang combo are just not going to be able to be as effective as 2x Inner Chaos + 3x IR FC's/4x Holy Spirit + Confiteor/5x Bloodspiller during Trick Attack windows.

Even more so when you consider... Gnashing Fang combo also utilizes your oGCD weaving time. While WAR gets a ton of opportunity to fit in their Upheaval and lulslaught, PLD can weave in their Spirits Within and Intervene and DRK can weave in their Plunge and Darkness oGCDs.

[JohnSeal]

Well, I agree with the part of burst and sustained dmg. IC will Smash everything xD
I was valuing the defences and mitigation skill more than dmg output.
I personally think Superbolide is the worst skill in the entire game, from a healing prospective much worst of LD. But that’s an opinion. About the other things we will see in the next few week from theory crafters and contents creators but also from seeing it in person by raiding ( like playing in first person or seeing others) who is right in between me and you :P
I want just to add that now all tanks mitigation cooldowns will last less than ever so you will find amazing tanks that can optimise dmg and defence greatly and thousands of others that will struggle to stay alive and using their toolkit properly. Mapping cooldowns will be even more important ( in savage) than before or poor healers xD

[Kalise]

I personally think Superbolide is the worst skill in the entire game, from a healing prospective much worst of LD. But that’s an opinion.

Superbolide is better than Holmgang and Living Dead. By a mile.

Superbolide puts you to 1HP, but then stops ANY damage you take for the duration.

Holmgang/Living Dead only stop you going below 1HP meaning that to be healed up, you have to not only be brought back UP from 1HP (Since the time you use these are to one button mitigate Tankbusters that hit for more than 100% of your health) but also have to counteract the damage that is being dealt through the duration - Such as Tankbusters that aren't just a single instance of damage, or boss auto attacks.

Living Dead being even worse because you NEED to be healed for 100% of your max health (Which means you're actually getting worse survivability by gearing up and getting more VIT...) or you die and if a trigger happy WHM Benediction's you right as your health drops down, they remove the effect meaning you can get smacked a second time and die...

This isn't even accounting for the fact that immunity such as the kind that Superbolide/Hallowed Ground gives also allows cheesing of mechanics because it will also prevent debuffs being applied to you. Such as ones that would require a Tank swap to deal with otherwise.

I want just to add that now all tanks mitigation cooldowns will last less than ever so you will find amazing tanks that can optimise dmg and defence greatly and thousands of others that will struggle to stay alive and using their toolkit properly. Mapping cooldowns will be even more important ( in savage) than before or poor healers xD

Wut?

The only CD that had its duration changed, was Vengeance. It went down to 10s duration like the other 30% DR skills.

Not only that, but every single Tank now has a short CD active mitigation skill. Sheltron got buffed to now blocking all attacks for 6 seconds, up from 1 instance. TBN got buffed up to 25% max HP shield up from 20%. WAR got Raw Intuition for 20% DR with 25s CD. GNB got HoS for 15% DR.

Rampart is unchanged. Shadow Wall is unchanged. Sentinel is now 120s CD down from 180s (But 30% DR down from 40%).

CD's are no more important than before. In fact, they're less important, because now everyone's running around with free 20% DR from the new Tank Trait, with ridiculously short CD 15-30% DR active mitigation skills and heck, all OT's can now provide 10-25% DR active mitigation skill too!

So, baseline, without factoring in any actually costly CD's, Tanks will be able to sit at 45%+ DR for any Tank buster (Considering that before, people were alternating Rampart + Vengeance for 50% DR and Holmgang for 1 button TB mitigation... Basically, everyone's getting a free Rampart + Vengeance on like 15-25s CD's...)

The only new decision making is that Holmgang can skip fewer TB's now with its increased CD. Though, given how much mitigation is now so readily available, I don't think it's likely to pose much of a problem, unless Savage encounter TB's are now requiring 90%+ mitigation to survive (Meaning Rampart + 30% skill + active mitigation + OT support) - At which point, GNB will be deleted from viability due to their crap mitigation skills.

[TouchandFeel]

Why you say the GNB have the worst kit for personal mitigation? Nebula is the same as Vengeance and sentinel, camouflage has high parry rate and 10% dmg reduction. Then HoS it’s soooo good 15% dmg reduction on a 25sec cooldown like the War Raw intuition and only this 2 tanks have this extra skill with such a short cooldown. Am I missing anything? :P

All the tanks have a mitigation ability that is available ~20s-30s. PLD has Sheltron, WAR has Raw Intuition, DRK has The Blackest Night and GNB has Heart of Stone.

WAR and GNB have these abilities detached from anything else and are just on a 25s recast timer. WAR's is 20% but lasts 5s, while GNB's is 15% but lasts for 7s. This makes WAR's better for most busters but GNB's may be slightly better for fluff damage or the less common longer multi-hit buster, which gives WAR a slight edge with these abilities for being MT over GNB.

DRK and PLD have both of their abilities tied to resources but at the rate of resource gain, both should be able to use their abilities between every 20s and every 30s, so basically the same as GNB and WAR. PLD's will be weaker until they get the Improved Sheltron trait and will scale a bit with gear/stats, so it will become stronger as we get farther into the ShB patches and iLvls increase. DRK's TBN was strong before and is even stronger now. In virtually all instances outside of super strong busters, TBN will likely prevent more damage from being taken than any of the other tank frequent use abilities. Dark Mind being magic only means that can't really be used for fluff and should be used for busters, many of or most being magic damage. These things make DRK lean more towards being MT over PLD.

In addition to those defensive differences, PLD and GNB have a smidge more support capabilities.

So basically, DRK and WAR are slightly more suited towards being MT while PLD and GNB are slightly more suited to being OT, however the disparity is not so large that any of the tanks couldn't work in either position, unlike the much stronger divisions that we have had in the past.