Have Tanks been dumbed down to much?

[armandojc3]

Thing is they are not dedicated tanks anymore, they are a mix of TANK and DPS, doing both and having tools for both but dont feel like they specialize in either. Next expansion they will heal as well.

[DemonicNeko]

For the most part Paladin and Gunbreaker so far from my experience feel good to play and definately feel fine given the amount of concentration you need to be optimal on them.

I can't speak for DRK since I haven't touched DRK since expansion.

WAR on the otherhand... BOY did they dumb down that job. I actually fell asleep at my monitor while doing Titania EX as WAR once, my god did they not realize WAR dumbed down too far from SB. There is just so little to do as a WAR until IR comes off cooldown then you finally have 10 secs where you feel like you are impacting and need to somewhat concentrate so you don't botch it up. After that you enter a down period that just feels bad to play honestly.

Dark Knight plays pretty much like Warrior. With less utility, crits, direct hits, defensive cooldowns. You just hit 123 to build your beast gauge.... I mean blood gauge. Then spend 50 points on Fell cleave.... I mean bloodspiller. Every so often we activate inner release..... I mean Delirium. With the only real difference is we have to balance our mp.

Compared to how HW DRK use to work it's a heavy dumbing down, the only thing that have in common with his older self is hilariously living dead.

Dumbing down I will 100% agree with you. As for the only thing in common with it old self. I disagree. We still do our soul eater combo to build up blood points. We still use bloodspiller on bosses. We still use blackest night on tank busters. Fact they change the dark art spam with Edge of shadow spam. Lol how funny is that. We still have a mana spam ability. Yes you can argue we are spamming edge less then dark arts would not say way less. Maybe half as much as the old dark arts. We are using mana for a dps booster like the old dark arts. It funny how they just changed it so it looks like we are not doing the dark art spam but in reality we are.

I wouldn't call it dumbing down, considering we're still doing more than Warrior does in the fact we're managing MP in order to do damage and have our on-demand shield on top of the gauge management, while WAR only manage gauge. We're still more complex than they are. Delirium...let's not open that can of worms, since we all know it could be better and more unique.

Now sure what you me we are doing more then Warrior? The only think we have difference from Warrior is Dark art spam..... I mean Edge of shadow spam. Same thing really. Bloodspiller = Fell cleave. Blood gauge = beast gauge. Warrior at less bring more dps, more utility and better tanking cooldowns. Beside our anti tank buster ability called Blackest Night. Do not get me wrong. I love BN but that really the only thing Dark Knights have.

[shao32]

That's if we compared to SB where indeed DRK still share bloodspiller, Quietus and TBN and Quietus was nerfed too so doubt it can count.
But compared to HW? There is nothing left mechanically speaking, except living dead that survive the purge bcs it's DRK theme thing like wth is wasn't the rest DRK theme stuff?.

[Ardox]

What does too homogenised even means?

When you have a job of that role you need to be able to do the mechanics so you'll need similar toolkits. I just don't see how a tank would work without defensive cooldowns, ways to get enmity on a group of mobs, ways to get on top of aggro for swaps, ways to get enmity from a distance, etc..

So, what would even look balanced-and-non-homogenised tanks?

[Machi_Machiavelli]

What does too homogenised even means?

When you have a job of that role you need to be able to do the mechanics so you'll need similar toolkits. I just don't see how a tank would work without defensive cooldowns, ways to get enmity on a group of mobs, ways to get on top of aggro for swaps, ways to get enmity from a distance, etc..

So, what would even look balanced-and-non-homogenised tanks?

Blink tanking

[BarretOblivion]

For the most part Paladin and Gunbreaker so far from my experience feel good to play and definately feel fine given the amount of concentration you need to be optimal on them.

I can't speak for DRK since I haven't touched DRK since expansion.

WAR on the otherhand... BOY did they dumb down that job. I actually fell asleep at my monitor while doing Titania EX as WAR once, my god did they not realize WAR dumbed down too far from SB. There is just so little to do as a WAR until IR comes off cooldown then you finally have 10 secs where you feel like you are impacting and need to somewhat concentrate so you don't botch it up. After that you enter a down period that just feels bad to play honestly.

[DRKoftheAzure]

For the most part Paladin and Gunbreaker so far from my experience feel good to play and definately feel fine given the amount of concentration you need to be optimal on them.

I can't speak for DRK since I haven't touched DRK since expansion.

WAR on the otherhand... BOY did they dumb down that job. I actually fell asleep at my monitor while doing Titania EX as WAR once, my god did they not realize WAR dumbed down too far from SB. There is just so little to do as a WAR until IR comes off cooldown then you finally have 10 secs where you feel like you are impacting and need to somewhat concentrate so you don't botch it up. After that you enter a down period that just feels bad to play honestly.

DRK is basically a gimped WAR with high risk no reward, if you want a TL;DR version.


But long version is; DRK is has no sustainability, damage type specific buffs are causing just as much balancing issues as damage resistance debuffs(which they got rid of at launch), Living Dead is still a black hole for resources, The Blackest Night is either DPS neutral or DPS loss, and everything I wanted DRK is on GNB.

[Jandor]

Maybe a tad, I was quite a staunch defender of both tank stances and enmity tools, and while I still enjoy tanking it definitely feels more blue DPS than it ever did before.

[Awful]

Streamlined is the word you're looking for not dumbed down, having a good tank vs having a bad tank is more apparent now than ever you have a lot of tanks going Lolbreaker but unable to mitigate properly and dying on every mass pull whereas you'll have a good Gunbreaker that knows how to use CDs, good dps uptime and great positioning.

If anything tanking has become more free flowing and unshackled if you ask me.