6.0 Both Tank and Healers Need Major Focus on Bringing Back Job Identity

[Kabooa]

It might be helpful if you put down what you think those identities should be, and how to achieve that.

For example

Following Paladin's theme of Holy Knight, looking at their current rotation we have an excess of nearly 3,000+ MP doing a standard rotation. Combos, passive regen, spirits within. Their GCD rotation is exceedingly tight so any additional GCD will require a bit more finesse.

For the only job utilizing a shield, their advancement hasn't included much around the shield. With the focus on sword and magic along with sword magic, it seems the natural place to put its new ability is combining magic with its shield into an OGCD ability that costs around 1500 to 3000 MP depending on how often we expect it to be used.

So it's a Shield based magic ability that does a thing, not interrupting its current rotation but putting more demand to maintain its uptime lest using it delay your ability to Requiscat window.

[BarretOblivion]

It might be helpful if you put down what you think those identities should be, and how to achieve that.

For example

Following Paladin's theme of Holy Knight, looking at their current rotation we have an excess of nearly 3,000+ MP doing a standard rotation. Combos, passive regen, spirits within. Their GCD rotation is exceedingly tight so any additional GCD will require a bit more finesse.

For the only job utilizing a shield, their advancement hasn't included much around the shield. With the focus on sword and magic along with sword magic, it seems the natural place to put its new ability is combining magic with its shield into an OGCD ability that costs around 1500 to 3000 MP depending on how often we expect it to be used.

So it's a Shield based magic ability that does a thing, not interrupting its current rotation but putting more demand to maintain its uptime lest using it delay your ability to Requiscat window.

Im sorry to say but SE doesn't take into consideration suggestions on the forums. They shown that with the DRK rework by ignoring every single input that was thrown around during SB and just pivoted towards "make it WAR".
PLD pivot more towards using the shield as a tool and more to do during requiscat.
WAR start pivoting away from IR, give the beast guage more to do with it, they are a beserker tank so pivot on that by giving them skills where they gain something from taking damage.
DRK should be given back Dark Arts as a skill and bring back scourge, give them another melee combo and rework Delirium or remove it, we don't need another tank with IR.
GNB, more to do with the blast charges and pivot towards the speed of the class staying at high gear, maybe give them a combo that increases their skill speed as its maintained.
TLDR: for all the tanks, more to do with our job guages that aren't just "FELL CLEAVE FOR ME!"

[Lyth]

Im sorry to say but SE doesn't take into consideration suggestions on the forums.

That's actually not true. If you look back, you'll see that they actually took a lot of the proposed suggestions for DRK from that thread on board immediately (4.3), and most of the rest they addressed this expansion, with the one exception of Living Dead. They also did a pretty good job of addressing the dps discrepancy within roles, the discrepancy in effectiveness between the various tank stances, and got rid of the mandatory 100% debuffs, which were all things that we collectively pushed fairly hard for. I don't think that homogenisation was necessarily the answer to all those issues, but they tried.

The problem is that the development/community team doesn't do a particularly good job of actually indicating what they're drawing feedback from. That's one of the few things that I like about Blizzard, in that their blue posts create a two way interaction with the developers and they do a good job of outlining the why of their decisions, even if the decisions themselves come across as a bit daft. That thread I linked was a bit of an exception, specifically because I called them out on it. It's also unclear how much gets actually translated back to the dev team, and whether the responses just get cherry picked.

As much as players are talking about rotational simplicity, I actually think that's the least of our worries. Would I like to see more creative rotations with more room for decision making? Absolutely. But what I really, truly want to see more than anything else is fight design in which the core tenets of tanking matter. I grew up watching Ciderhelm videos on tank positioning tricks during Lich King. I really just want to see that tank movement becomes the starting point for their fight design. And to do that, I think they need to get rid of auto-positioning bosses, and fix that dumb spin strat exploit that forces this kind of boss movement.

[Kabooa]

And to do that, I think they need to get rid of auto-positioning bosses, and fix that dumb spin strat exploit that forces this kind of boss movement.

One would think that "Stop basic AI" thing they do for major mechanics would be sufficient.

[Lyth]

One would think that "Stop basic AI" thing they do for major mechanics would be sufficient.

I'm not even sure why that happens in the first place. There was this trick that players did in Leviathan Ex back in ARR where the Wavetooth Sagahin is supposed to use an uninterruptable Dreadwash as a sort of dps check. But if your WAR did a Holmgang and leapt away from the mob, it would be forced to move when its position was supposed to be locked (due to the binding chain), interrupting the cast. It's strange that a lot of these "casted" abilities require a stationary mob in order to execute them, or else they get interrupted (or could not be initiated in the case of the spin strat exploit, prior to auto-positioning bosses). If this is a coding issue that they can't directly fix, I think the best solution is to design fights with an untargetable offscreen mob that casts the AoEs. That way the fight follows the script irrespective of what happens to mob positioning.

Either way, I'm baffled that they still can't make mobs cleave while moving. I was watching some of the more recent stuff from Warcraft and was drooling over how smoothly their bosses continued to respond to even slight changes in tank movement while throwing out attacks, AoEs, and cleaves without the need for position locks. And this was the case even back circa 2006. I know that they're working with what they inherited from 1.x, but it's been 7 years. Please fix your coding. The present fix of auto-positioning bosses is not an appropriate countermeasure.

[Kabooa]

The present fix of auto-positioning bosses is not an appropriate countermeasure.

The idea of an invisible mechanic-buddy for the boss seems an appropriate jank work around if the baseline code can't be altered in a reasonable timeframe. Thinking on it, if the problem is the baseline AI, there's similarities between Pet jank and Boss Jank that would be hard to ignore.

A mechanic buddy, director, however one would want to classify it is suitably hidden from the player's eye while providing much of the benefit. The boss can flit around as it needs to, and as mechanics need to happen, the buddy snapshots the boss facing and position and works from there, while being able to simply lay down the dance floor without issue.

Cleaves take the boss's facing / position, AoE's wouldn't require a cast bar, PBAoEs snapshot position, etc, while the hidden director sources the boss's current debuff state and performs the mechanic, all while it seemingly comes from the boss.

[Payotz]

Im sorry to say but SE doesn't take into consideration suggestions on the forums. They shown that with the DRK rework by ignoring every single input that was thrown around during SB and just pivoted towards "make it WAR".
PLD pivot more towards using the shield as a tool and more to do during requiscat.
WAR start pivoting away from IR, give the beast guage more to do with it, they are a beserker tank so pivot on that by giving them skills where they gain something from taking damage.
DRK should be given back Dark Arts as a skill and bring back scourge, give them another melee combo and rework Delirium or remove it, we don't need another tank with IR.
GNB, more to do with the blast charges and pivot towards the speed of the class staying at high gear, maybe give them a combo that increases their skill speed as its maintained.
TLDR: for all the tanks, more to do with our job guages that aren't just "FELL CLEAVE FOR ME!"

I'm not even sure if the ENG Community Team is actually providing this feedback to begin with.
If the messengers actually see these posts across the Tank/Healer and General Forums but they reassure the dev team that "Oh yeah everything's fine. Oh yeah, they said WHM needs to be a lot more easier to play", nothing's gonna change.
Who knows, they might just be cherry picking. It's not a 100%, but it sure seems like it.