The entire transcript can be found on http://wow.stratics.com/

Here's some tidbits I found interesting:



Confirms they followed the "addition by subtraction" line of thought: nerf the two biggest reasons healing priests weren't being brought.



Not much to add ...



And yet mobs have more mitigation than at 60. Strange beast.



This is huge. This is the number 1 issue that makes warriors the "tank" class above all tank classes, something that simply couldn't be changed by tweaking class skills slightly.

I was under the impression that Paladins were the lead "uncrushable" class, but that they weren't being used due to lower base HP and virtually no "OH SHI-" buttons.

The cloth armor giving less mitigation always cracked me up when I heard it. My mail wearers lost about 10% or more mitigation as well going from 60 to 70. It was all so that plate mail and shields (which got big armor boosts) would be more valuable as best as I could tell.

The crushing blow changes I think is good. I'm glad they agree that it is just too random and unfun. It's the biggest blow to druid tanking as well. Paladins can get there if they work at it, and if they do, they stay uncrushable more readily than warriors, but with a lower life pool, and no real tricks.

I still think most of the issues with hunters is in itemization. The next is oddball synergy, I still think you fix that by having some buffs that don't affect hunter now, unleashed rage, battle shout, etc, affect them as opposed to really changing the hunter core but that's me. This would fit in with how they are helping priests by nerfing paladin healing. Something that I don't have a problem with. Nerfing one class to make another class relatively stronger hasn't really been an issue for me. It helps avoid some of the power creep issues that they put a pretty decent clamp on in TBC.

I'm interested in how future shaman and pally tuning will work that they mentioned.

I like that there will be more 10 man content.

I don't mind the current keying processes, but then again I love 5 mans. But I can see how it could be annoying for some folks and play style so them cutting down some of that is a good thing.


I'm just looking forward to seeing 2.1 in action finally. There is a pretty wide set of changes. Unfortunately for me there is some stuff in heroics and elsewhere that my slower play pace means I won't see pre-nerf. But i did get to see most of it. The 55 minute heroic Shattered Halls being one of the big exceptions.

Not entirely correct. Warriors favor slow hitting bosses, paladins favor fast hitting bosses. Paladins rely on a proc mechanism to become uncrushable (combined with a spell they have to activate). It's not impossible for a paladin tank to reach 55%+ miss/block/parry/dodge altogether, and at that moment, they begin pushing off crushing blows simply by proccing Redoubt. They need combined ~40% avoidance to start pushing them off completely with both spells, but that's not hard. Warriors only need 25%, though.

Paladins are perfectly able to become uncrushable, and depending on the proc rate (which is supposedly 10%, though I have heard different accounts), they might do it more reliably than warriors.

And paladins have the most fun "oh shi-" buttons on tauntable bosses, even if only for ~3 seconds. Divine Shield + Righteous Defense.

Actually, raiding Paladin tanks usually do not rely on procs to push crushing blows off the hit table. Most of raid tanking is currently tuned to deal huge spikes of damage when *no* crits or crushing blows are landing. When those are allowed to land at all, they are usually the death knell to the tank. Sure, you might survive some of those big hits if you can't get rid of them all, but at some point there will be a burst of damage that will knock out the tank without any possible way for the tank or healers to compensate. Any non-zero random element like that usually means a wipe given the long duration boss fights that the game has, currently, thus it become imperative that you completely mitigate all chance of being crit or crushed. Therefore, paladins end up having to grab all of the block/dodge/parry/miss that they can (they need a combined ~68% plus the +5% shield block libram) to make sure they don't have to rely on procs (hence why many feel Redoubt is pretty close to useless as a talent for raid tanking). That's what you should compare to the Warrior's ~28% requirement to negate crushing blows.

Also throw in the fact that there will basically always be a period of time when Paladins are crushable as they go to refresh holy shield (its duration is equal to its cooldown whereas a Warrior's shield block has a longer duration than cooldown) and I think it's safe to say that Warriors are the class that has the best capability for dealing with crushing blows. Even if they do get hit by it, Last Stand and Shield Wall are viable options for them to survive. The Paladin shield pales in comparison since it basically means the boss is going to turn and insta-gib whoever has secondary aggro.

Eh, yes and no.

Shadow Priests are just too useful for sheer utility, despite the nerfs. Ok, so they won't rock the damagemeters now, but the incredible utility of mana and health regen combined with Silence (when applicable) makes them worth having. Along with the fort buffs, of course, if no Holy Priest is present. I read so many posts in forums about how this group did such-and-such raid encounter without any real mana issues (e.g. Ilhoof, possibly Karazhan's most mana-intensive fight) and only find out later that they had a Shadow Priest along. Having a Shadow Priest turns a chain-mana-pot-chugging, double-innervate fight into a no-potion, no-innervate fight.

You're still missing two gigantic reasons why Paladins are still preferred. Paladins are stackable. The buffs and utility they provide stacks, such that having 2 or 3 healing Paladins along is always better than 2 or 3 healing Priests. Blessings rule. Of course you want one Priest for Fort and Divine Spirit, and any raiding Holy Priest worth 2 cents will have Divine Spirit. But why would you want more than one, considering players of equal skill level, when a second Paladin brings another Blessing to the table? That's Kings AND Salvation for your DPS'ers, Kings AND Wisdom for your healers, etc. It's similar to why Hunters are getting the shaft now; there's just little reason to bring them other than Misdirection. Priests have great group heals! But...how often do they get used in a raid, in such a way that they're considered critical? Netherspite, perhaps. Especially when Prayer of Mending from two Priests actually get in the way of each other and cancel each other out...

There's still this big perception out there, especially amongst non-healing-character players, that Priests are the golden children of raid healing. This is based on 5-man healing experiences where Priests do rule, yes. It just doesn't carry into raiding as well. Do you want Priests? Yes. Do you want 3 Priests or 1 Priest and 2 Paladins? Assuming equal skill level, you're nuts if you want 3 Priests. Of course, since "equal skill level" never really exists, that comparison just doesn't come into play in Real Life.

Okay, Paladins will have to drink mana potions now because they can't heal forever. They'll get to experience my nights in Kara where I down 10+ potions a session. Priests didn't want Paladins to get nerfed, we wanted to get buffed.

The other big issue is that Priests are made of glass. We die. Easily. You know it, you've seen how much I get creamed despite heavily favoring Stamina on my gear unlike Mooncloth-geared Priests. Nightbane is the most obvious example, but there are scores more.

Of course all this applies to raiding only. 5-mans is a different story. Except...that in heroics, if I pull healing aggro on something, I can take 2 hits tops. Fighting Kargoth last night gave me the heebie jeebies because, being cloth, an unlucky string of Blade Dance on me and I'm dead. If he can (and did) erase a Warlock from full health to zero in one Blade Dance, despite said Warlock hiding in a corner at max distance, having a Paladin doing the healing ceases that worry.

I could get into the PvP issues of how little survivability we have, but meh. The armor nerf plays a role in that too, along with an ever-increasing list of ways to counter fear - our only escape ability.

And of course we have the worst 31 and 41 point talents in our primary tree out there, which has also been beaten to death. Priest aficionados can tell you about how we have never, in WoW's history, had a must-get end-Holy talent. The theories abound, with the most popular being that Blizzard can't figure out a 31 or 41 point talent that doesn't "break WoW" in that it would just about require you to have a Holy Priest around. But yet they design tanking such that Warriors have that luxury.

I realize I'm viewing the world through my Priest-centric glasses and that I'm QQ'ing. But the fact still remains that I'm nerfed from pre-TBC days and I know it. And Priests know it. And Blizzard's response is to buff Circle of Healing by 25 heal and reduce the mana cost of Binding Heal. Oh boy.

If Blizzard came out and said "look, we felt you guys were too powerful pre-TBC," I guess I'd be okay with it. But it just seems like they don't understand. I'd hope the recent posts from Armory-mined talent selection data shows them just how few Holy Priests actually spec deep in their "primary" tree...and I say "primary" in jest because healing Priests have never had a primary tree. We've always been a fairly even split between Discipline and Holy, unlike every other healing class that goes deep into one tree.

Priests need some whiz-bang utility or a heal that's more than a gimmick (Lightwell, Circle of Healing). I don't think it can be done without breaking PvP. One great summary of the overall problem I read once is that Priests have too much *default* utility. Out of the box, we get:

Hot: Renew
Big Heal: Greater Heal
Fast Heal: Flash Heal
Instant Save or Pre-Buff: Power Word: Shield
Utility Heal: Prayer of Mending
Group Heal: Prayer of Healing
Utility Heal: Binding Heal

What more could you add to that which doesn't completely break balance? Nothing that I can think of. So Blizzard adds, via Holy talents:

Holy Nova: instant cast, heals some and does damage without causing threat, but costs way too much mana
Lightwell: portable bandage bucket, but if the player takes any damage at all it cancels the effect
Circle of Healing: ranged group heal, castable on other groups, but all players must be ridiculously close to each other, and once again group heals just aren't that useful in raids compared to direct heals

All of these are highly, highly situational gimmicks that a large majority (shown via Armory datamining) of healing Priests don't bother picking up - since we're forced to, due to highly useful healing/utility talents existing in the Discipline tree!

Prayer of Mending should have been the Holy 41-point talent, not Circle of Healing. Not that I'd want Blizzard to do that, since they seem dead-set on forcing Priests to choose between raid utility (Divine Spirit, Improved Divine Spirit) and 41 points in Holy. Which is also incredibly frustrating. Why are no other healing classes forced to make such a choice?

-Bolty

Why exactly would they require a total of 103% to push off crushing blows when 100% does it just fine?

Anyway, you're right; I completely forgot that.


You're forgetting an important point: The durations of these abilities are determined solely by the attack speed of the boss involved.

If the boss has a 2 sec attack speed, Shield Block will not block every third hit even when spammed. Holy Shield will not block every fifth hit.
If the boss has a 3 sec attack speed, Shield Block will block every hit, and so will Holy Shield... and it even has a charge left when the duration runs out.

So no, they don't. Paladins (who have stacked avoidance till 65%+ as well as the +5% block libram) are more reliable in a crushing blow situation.

It depends upon the baseline that you're looking at. I was assuming more than 100% because bosses will generally be +3 levels so they get +15 weapon skill which gives 4x0.6%=2.4% (miss, dodge, parry, block) more mitigation required => 102.4% ~ 103% (I rounded up).

If you already account for the higher level bosses, then you would say 100%. However, I figure it makes more sense to base it off of what you read on the character screen (versus an equal level mob) so I go with the higher number.


I didn't forget, I just discount it because few mobs fall in that category, as I recall. If you're talking about *really fast* attacking bosses, then warriors will still win due to higher life total (more leeway) and more predictable avoidance (shield block can be used twice as often as holy shield so there are shorter periods of time when you're susceptible to crushing blows). If you're talking about moderate speed mobs, Paladins will generally not run out of charges, but they still have substantially less life, fewer panic buttons and they have much more draconian gearing requirements than warriors. Oh, and paladins can't really push off crushing blows while in resistance gear, take more spell damage, are susceptible to silence, can be rocked by mana burns, and cannot spell reflect; those are additional strikes against them.

So I guess if you separate mitigating crushing blows from everything else in the game, Paladins might actually be better for those two or three fights with really fast attacking bosses. But if you take it as a whole, they really don't compare well to warriors, as currently implemented.

Really fast attacking bosses can't also be the ZOMG crush one rounders (I'm pretty sure). It'd be too much pressure on the healers.


Priests are a bit odd. Everybody is supposed to have 3 trees, but what exactly is the point of discipline. How is it supposed to play different then holy? Or if you were redesigning the class, how would discipline play different then holy?

Warriors are in somewhat of a similar boat - what's the real difference between arms and fury in PvE supposed to be? And arms is so massively overpowered in pvp it really distorts everything else.

Survival also gets a bit of the "what's this here for" treatment.

Back to pallys, the conventional wisdom is that they are the king's of the AOE tank world. The problem with prot pallys is that the big bonuses for going deep prot all relate to single target tanking, which dev's have said (and I agree) is for prot warriors. If raids were still 40 it might be ok to say "there are some AOE pulls that you just can't do without a prot pally" the same way a couple of encounters forced having multiple hunters along. It would require altering the bottom part of that tree to effect AOE tanking. Alternatively, you could have a deep prot talent that boosted blessing of sacrifice to a useable level (as far as mitigation). This could make it really attractive to have a paladin "co-tank". However it would be difficult to balance without making the co-tank required. And I don't know how fun it would be to just cast BoSac and watch big red numbers appear over your head. And 25 man raids are already too full of hybrids trying to get out of healing. I suppose if you had a full time prot pally, you could cut back to one feral, and have a HT druid.

Spell Reflection doesn't have much use in raiding, or so I've heard. I've only done a small amount of raiding with my warrior, but I recall spells hitting me just fine even when I was using it.

As for running out of charges, we just got a talent to double the number of charges (and increase the damage dealt, too. Yay more threat?)

My major beef with how my Pally tanks versus my Warrior tanks is that I have no real escape buttons if something bad happens. I CAN bubble, taunt, and then kill the bubble after the next heal lands, but that's not really a feasible option for Heroic or raid tanking (as mentioned, the boss you're tanking will proceed to go on a rampage through the melee DPS during the couple of seconds you're bubbled), and Lay on Hands is on a very long timer and completely drains your remaining mana. Granted, I can still do a fair bit with 550 MP, but it won't last long.

I would like my Pally to be a competitive tank with Warriors, but I also feel that Warriors should be the ultimate general-purpose tank, given that they don't have buffs, heals, or dispels like I do. Basically, I'd like for it to be possible to swap in a Paladin tank for a Warrior tank (in a 25-man setting; we all know that any of the three tanking classes can tank Karazhan perfectly well) without completely screwing the raid over. Should it be a little easier and a little safer with a Warrior? Yeah. But I don't think that having a Pally tank should mean auto-wipe, either

Prince Malchezaar has a "thrash" attack that strings 3 hits together in about 1 second. All three have the capability to crush. Maulgar can Arcing Smash and crush hit also in the span of less than a second. In both situations, an undergeared tank just literally dies in a flash, and no healer can save them. Romulo, before he was nerfed into a joke, did an absolutely unreal amount of damage with the Daring buff.

These are extreme boss examples. Of course, these are also the bosses where I'd want a Warrior tanking over anything else. Note that our raid force has already beaten Maulgar with a feral Druid tanking him, however.

-Bolty

Sadly this is true. Spellreflect in its current incarnation is barely situational. The change they made in taking it off the GCD is a step in the right direction but right now its a novelty. It will reflect most 5man dungeon caster-spells that are either direct target or a volley-type spell, "true" aoe spells are not affected (obviously).
But for pretty much 99% of spell-damage outside 5mans, be it heroic or normal it may as well never have existed.

Spells punch right through the shield, no effect whatsoever.
I may have been that they felt it was entirely too strong (esp if the reflected spell counts as the warriors own threat, which I don't know if it does) but either way in just about all big situations where spell reflect may have felt like "oh wow now would be a great time to have it" it doesn't work.
And no, reflecting Attumens %miss-curse doesn't count ^^.

Point well taken.


No, because Holy Shield has twice as many charges. If we base it on a 1 sec attack speed, the warrior blocks 33% of all blows (the first two out of six), the paladin blocks 40% (the first four out of ten). The paladin favors fast hitting bosses more than the warrior does, looking only at crushing blows.


Oh definitely. While paladins are more reliable with regards to mitigating crushing blows, they fall far short on pretty much every other point, and warriors perform well enough with regards to crushing blows that they hardly take more damage when compared with a paladin. While the paladin is capable of tanking now (which he really wasn't prior to TBC), he is definitely the weakest tanking class--despite the fact that he boasts the best defense against one of the most crippling boss mechanics in the game. He simply gives up too much.

A Feral druid tank is generally superior on the Maulgar fight over a warrior due to Maulgar's pure physical attacks. Only his regular attacks can crush, all of his specials can't. A warrior mitigates crushing blows primarily through pushing it off the table, while a Feral druid soaks it through armor... and the latter works on the specials as well, whereas Shield Block doesn't. The encounter is perfectly viable with a warrior tank, but a Feral druid tank should, at least in theory, take significantly less spike damage.

Yeah, it's clearly a niche skill. I brought it, mana burn and silence up because, from what I read, there are quite a few situations in Tempest Keep where the mobs use either mana burn, silence or a really big magic attack that needs to be reflected (or absorbed by a Druid's superior life pool). I think it's really sad that there are encounters where the game basically says "Paladins need not apply." At any rate, they are no more niche, generally, than those encounters where a paladin might tank better than a warrior... the difference is that warriors can still do pretty well in those situations where they aren't *quite* as good and paladins basically sit on the sideline.

At any rate, I think crushing blows are obviously an out-dated mechanic that doesn't really add any fun to the game. People just use their knowledge of combat mechanics to try and not take them. Since only two classes (Warrior and Paladin) can negate them and only one of them can do it easily (Warriors) it seems a really stupid artificial block against the tanking ability of the other classes.

I'd really like to see tanking become more of an open activity like healing. All have distinctly different flavors yet they can all get the job done fairly equally. This is in a stark contrast to tanking which has an artificial block to ensure that Warriors are top of the heap in basically every situation. They should either remove crushing blows, given paladins and druids a better ability to handle them, or put it on a different combat table so that you can't abuse blocking to mitigate them.

Here's my reasoning. Let's step through 10 seconds of tanking for both a warrior and a paladin with the 1 second attack example.

Warrior:
t = 0: Warrior activates Shield Blocks
t = 1: Warrior blocks an attack
t = 2: Warrior blocks an attack
t = 3: Warrior gets hit (chance for crushing blow)
t = 4: Warrior gets hit (chance for crushing blow)
t = 5: Warrior gets hit (chance for crushing blow) and activates Shield Block => Repeat
t = 6: Warrior blocks an attack
t = 7: Warrior blocks an attack
t = 8: Warrior gets hit (chance for crushing blow)
t = 9: Warrior gets hit (chance for crushing blow)
t = 10: Warrior gets hit (chance for crushing blow) and activates Shield Block => Repeat

Paladin:
t = 0: Paladin activates Holy Shield
t = 1: Paladin blocks an attack
t = 2: Paladin blocks an attack
t = 3: Paladin blocks an attack
t = 4: Paladin blocks an attack
t = 5: Paladin gets hit (chance for crushing blow)
t = 6: Paladin gets hit (chance for crushing blow)
t = 7: Paladin gets hit (chance for crushing blow)
t = 8: Paladin gets hit (chance for crushing blow)
t = 9: Paladin gets hit (chance for crushing blow)
t = 10: Paladin gets hit (chance for crushing blow)

In the first case, the Warrior blocks 2 attacks, takes 3 hits (chance for crushing blow), blocks 2 attacks and takes 3 hits (chance for crushing blow). In the second case, the Paladin blocks 4 attacks, then takes 6 hits (chance for crushing blow). Clearly, the second case is more likely to have a longer period of spike damage than the first. Since spike damage is the danger of crushing blows, the second case is clearly more dangerous.

You're stacking the situation in the warrior's favor.

Add five seconds and suddenly the paladin's the one on top.

And, uh, how can the warrior activate an ability thrice that has a 6 second cooldown in an 11-second period?

Not really. 3 crushing blows in a row is a lot less of a problem than 6 in a row as far as spiking damage goes. It gives the healers time to top off the Warrior before he takes the next potential burst. 6 crushing blows in a row means the healers better be really on the ball or it's game over.


Easy, it has a 5 second cooldown and a 6 second duration (with improved shield block).

Ahh. Yes, that's the cinch. In that case, they're about equal in terms of damage taken from crushing attacks (2 attacks blocked with a 5 sec cooldown versus 4 with a 10), but the warrior a.) won't take them all in a row, and b.) will take less damage due to Defensive stance.

You're right, the warrior's clearly superior.

I don't think fans of paladin and druid MT viability should get too excited because Kalgan states later:



This is annoying on several levels

First it isn't true

Primary tank: done best by Warrior (true if you accept the very debatable contention that Warriors are a pure class)
Primary raid dps: Warlocks and Shadow Priests (so not true)
Primary two-role classes: Priests and Warriors with the pure hybrids considerably worse (not true)
Primary healer: still Paladins (not true)

So it is clearly untrue for three out of four roles and since you can't really describe WoW Warrior as a pure punchbag class with no dps option not even true for tanking

They are still playing the game of telling the community that there are three viable end-game tank classes in the process of being tuned and telling the Warriors that they'll always be advantaged over the other two

It's cheap and dishonest

Next it's a dreadful way to run WoW. People like WoW because every class is interesting. Because there are no pure classes except dps ones. However for most people several classes are now becoming boring after you've levelled them up. I've taken both a Paladin and a Druid to 70 now and they are so much more fun before you hit 70 when you can do everything than at 70 when not only must you choose between being a second-rate tank who only gets to tank when there's no decent Warriors around or a healbot but also once you raid as one role you accumulate gear to enhance that role and can't effectively role-swap any more.

Working on my Warrior now having tried Lord of the Rings Online but not really got enthused. WoW has become a tide-over rather than something I'm really fired up about.

I would be much less frustrated if they decided what class roles we all should have at end-game and implemented it then stuck to it.

No longer true. Paladins get eight charges on Holy Shield now (I don't really see a compelling reason not to take Improved Holy Shield.)

I believe the recent changes to Ardent Defender are a step in the right direction for partially alleviating the gulf in HP between Warriors and Paladins, though I think the damage reduction range should be further increased. I'd much rather have 20% reduction starting at 49% HP than 30% at 34%.

However, I do think a major problem with Paladin tanking (from my perspective, at least) is a complete lack of "Oh, $@#&" buttons. If you get an unlucky string of crits (which do happen reasonably often tanking pre-70, since there isn't a glut of Defense Rating gear, like at 70) or other such nastiness, the Paladin has only a few, mostly ineffective options: chug a potion (which really won't help too terribly much), blow Lay on Hands (which is on a 60 minute cooldown and drains nearly all of your mana), or pop Divine Shield+Taunt until the next heal lands (which greatly increases the chance the Rogue with you is going to get splattered all over the floor.) Comparatively, Warriors can pop Last Stand (as far as tanking goes, I miss this ability more than all of the other nifty Warrior tricks combined) or Shield Wall, and also pop the aforementioned potion. Granted, we can partially mitigate incoming damage via Judgement of Light (and Seal of Light if we have enough of a threat lead), but it's not nearly enough. I do think that the Paladin needs deep-tree one-shot abilities like Last Stand in order to really be competitive with Warriors.

Additionally, I've heard quite a bit of complaining about Redoubt, and it does seem that it's a little weak for raid-tanking, given its proc-based nature.

Look through my posts and you can clearly see I'm no fanboi. I feel this post is way too dire.

I have fairly extensive experience with druids and warriors (raiding bear, 67 warrior). I find the druid *much* easier to play in a 5 man. I'm not really looking forward to collecting nethers with my warrior.

For raiding, druid off-tanks also bring important advantages over warriors - excellent threat when not taking damage, huge amounts of armor, vastly superior threat on 2-3 targets, higher overall threat, and much better damage (either in tank gear or in dps gear). We use tanking druids because for many situations they are clearly better then warriors.

For example - when we put Mag down on Wed, we used 2 ferals and 3 warriors. I was in full tank gear (except for a weapon swap). I came in 6th for damage done to Mag, nearly trippleing the damage done by the two left over warriors. Now I did get mangles and was not on cube duty, but I also shifted to help heal a few times, as well as brez and innervate twice.

Now, the single large boss does heavily favor warriors still. I'll admit, they have waffled a bit on if a warrior will be required to tank raid encounters. But if you didn't figure out at Lucifron that warriors were the raid tank, or had it figured out but decided to roll pally *AND* druid anyways based on a few vague comments, I don't know what to say. If you can't find plenty of fun things to do with a druid... I hope Conan comes out soon for you or something.

Agreed. I think you said the rest in your post just fine.

I just have a comment on druid vs warrior tanking. I've tanked a lot of things with my warrior, and know it pretty well, I think.

For contrast, tanking with my druid is both easier and harder, IMO. Easier, because there are less buttons to push. We have the basics, but don't have all the other situational tools a warrior has. So, it's easier....and it's harder. Simpler tools, but less options when things start going wrong. Still fun, just different, I think.

This is absurd. I've been through most of SSC and TK and anyone describing a bear tank as second-rate needs to get their head checked. We have a raiding bear who we use to tank nearly every fight in there, and that's even with 3 Prot warriors in the raid besides. Druids have clear advantages on nearly every fight in TBC raiding content. And as for paladins, they make excellent tanks for non-boss components of fights (and this isn't Molten Core, there literally IS no fight where you have just one boss and nothing else).

Now stop sounding like you come from the official WoW forums.

Let me fix those assertations of fact for you:

Primary tank: Protection specc'd Warrior
Primary raid dps: Warlock, Mage, Rogue, Hunter
Primary two role classes: Priests, Warriors, Druids, Paladins
Primary healer: Priests, Druids, Paladins

As a dps warrior who tanked every encounter in the game up to the Twin Emps in AQ40 I can tell you that if you want a stand out tank you want a protection specc'd warrior. The difference in damage I took in TBC between arms spec and protection was noticable. That being said I've had a druid tank with me for all of TBC and they are perfectly viable boss tanks and certainly can offtank with EASE in a raid environment. I wouldn't necessarily want a protpaladin on a boss but they can offtank in a raid environment with ease as well. The only reason I wouldn't want a protpaladin is they have even fewer oh-shoot buttons than a warrior that doesn't wipe aggro on a boss. They also have less of a health pool to draw from than a protection specc'd warrior and in Blizzard's "Design every encounter to hit harder and faster - no room for error" fashion less of a hp pool means a wipe.



My dps, even dual-wielding with King's Defender and The Decapitator is no where near what a druid in cat form (or a bear for that matter) can put out. I probably do more dps than a holy/prot paladin but its not by much. If I'm not tanking in a raid there isn't a whole lot I can bring to a raid aside from Quark's battleshout or the tank's commanding shout.



Last time I checked each of the druid, paladin, and warrior tier sets have a set that covers each of the spec's.

I think you missed the point here. A lot of raids aren't going to be real interested in giving out secondary role gear to people until everyone has their primary set... at which point most people are done with the instance and want to move on. Certainly, loot distribution is a social construction but it is exacerbated by things like the grouping of Druid/Priest/Warrior for tier loots where every class can use multiple sets, so they have a lot more competition to deal with for those sets. I have certainly read plenty of stories about protection paladins (or want-to-be prot pallies) who cannot get their hands on the generic (non-class-specific) tanking plate gear until after the warriors have it, so they are perpetually behind the curve and unable to get a shot at tanking things. Of course there are exceptions, but these things happen and I think that was the point.

Same thing with my Pally. Tanking multiple targets is effortless (pull with Avenger's Shield, pop Consecration of either low rank or high rank depending on how much threat you need to build on the secondary targets, put up Holy Shield, and judge Righteousness on any mobs that didn't get hit with Avenger's Shield), but it's also very easy to forget to refresh seals and keep your consecration-holy shield cycle going smoothly. While Warriors can "soak" their GCDs via skills like Cleave and Heroic Strike, Paladins can't; Judgement is free of the GCD, but every other skill they use is on it.

Overall, I don't really have a problem with Paladins being secondary to Warriors for tanking major raid bosses; I don't see anything wrong with that. However, I do think that Paladins should be able to tank those same bosses; while it might be a little easier (and more effective, especially when learning those encounters) to do them with a Warrior, I think that it should be perfectly possible to do them with a Paladin or Druid tank with only slight adjustments. Currently, this isn't so (at least in the case of Paladins.)

Precisely.

Yeah, in my opinion the hardest parts about 5 mans are the big multi pulls. Druids do those better, so they make the hardest part easier. Warriors are probably better on most bosses, but most bosses aren't that much trickier then on regular. Of course, I've mostly been sticking to the heroics that are most popular in my guild, so I can't be sure that's true of all heroics.

These days I can swipe-tank trash in Heroic instances with little trouble (assuming I have a good healer, of course). CC? Who needs CC?

I don't think you can have both ways.

Right now warriors, if spec-ed for prot, are not of much use if they aren't tanking. They are definitely of less use than a druid or paladin who isn't tanking.

even if you ignore the tanking differences of these three classes warriors will still be main tanking in most raids because they are least useful outside of a tanking role. This is the grand utility of the hybrid classes shining.

Example: If a druid is main tanking, he can't innervate anyone. If a druid is off-tanking there is likely an opportunity to offer an innervate at some point. If ther off-tank is to provide DPS after his target is dead, a druid is much more capable of offering that while in tanking gear than a warrior. Night and day differences... A warrior is like ~6% crit (plus cruelty maybe) and 800 attack power in tanking gear. Where does a druid stand there?

Now how can this be changed while still preserving the hybrid nature of the class? I really do not think it can. Either you substantially revise the classes so that the utility only comes from talent investment (we saw how well that worked with innervate on druids). Or you diversify the "core" class to the point that all classes are as hybrid as the hybrid classes.

Do hybrid classes really want either of those scenarios? I think if either of those happened we'd see even more flying off the handle furious rage than ever.

It is the nature of a hybrid tanking class to be an off-tank. It's how their utility can be... uhh... utilized. Even if you ignore the tanking capability differences between the three classes, you can't ignore the utility differences between the classes. The utility advantages that druids and paladin carry are a blessing and a curse. They offer great benefit, but the simple existence of that utility means they will not often be the primary tank except in "gimmick" situations that specifically cater to their tanking advantages.

To some extent, the nature of the role is that which encourages conflict. How many main tanks are on a 25 man raid? 1? 2? How many primary healers? how many DPS? The fact that there are so few "main tanking positions" means that there will be conflict.

I agree with your post Conc. If a druid or palladin could hold down your traditional one boss tank and spanks as well as a warrior.... why would you have *any* prot warriors aside from gimmics like fear and all elemental bosses?

My numbers with a couple of pieces of gladiator and a couple of T4 are about 22% and 1600, if memory serves. But even if it was 6/800, I would blow away a warrior with my cat abilities. Remember, I am trippleing the DPS of tank warriors in tank gear.

That sounds a little low. With pure tank gear (and nothing but pre-Kara gear except the Revered Violet Ring), I have ~1485 AP and 22.56% crit in cat form.

I don't agree with you here - the mechanics of the primary roles of a spec dictate what tank gear they would be interested in. Obviously druid tanks cannot wear plate but for the same reason paladin tanks aren't going to be as interested in non-warrior tank loot as they would be looking at optimizing different stats for the most part than warriors.

Now I will grant you that Blizzard messed up with itemization in Karazhan that emphasizes what they expect each of the classes will be doing primarily, very little dps plate, no defensive plate with intellect and defense, leather with healing on it, etc.

*one* piece of dam/heal mail other than T4......(GRR)

Not really. Besides the Tier sets, Paladin and Warrior tanking gear is exactly the same. It's not like Paladins run around with +800 spell damage, 400 intellect,and 100 mp5 from tanking gear or something, they tend to use a Spell Damage weapon (if that) and maybe one other piece of gear with spell damage. Otherwise they want all of the +stamina, +avoidance gear they can find... which is, coincidentally, really good for Warriors, too. Tanks need tank stats, regardless of class. Due to sharing the same type of armor (plate) and common game mechanics that deal with damage mitigation and life totals, Warrior and Paladin tank loot is basicaly the same.

Oh, the irony

Where does this habit of giving an auto-biography come from when you have something you wish to assert? Can we please just assume that the quality of our posts reflects our experience, it's pretty obvious when people are talking about things they haven't experienced. Besides most of us have known each others' posts for about 5 years now



I find the opposite (perhaps because I pug more than you). Much easier to get groups with the Warrior, easier to get chosen as the person who will be doing the tanking with the Warrior, the over-nukers have a better feeling for how long to wait before they start to unload and 2 seconds off Taunt cooldown is a life-saver.



Agreed, my frustration is that druids are not capable of being the "star of the show" main tanks that we were capable of being in January. My frustration is compounded when people like Kalgan state that the reason we should not be so empowered is because the pure class should be better. What pure class? There are no pure classes in WoW. What he really means is Druids, as a hybrid class, can't be as good because fanboys of some other hybrid class get emo



I can see that this may be the case but I can't see the situation in which it matters. I've not found threat generation of a Warrior to be lacking when both my Druid and a Warrior co-tank are ping-ponging aggro. What situations require more threat than a Prot Warrior generates while not taking damage?



The only meaningful number is damage taken. How much and how spikey. Everything else is fluff



With what? The horribly reduced Swipe? Do you really feel that Swipe beats Thunderclap spam by so much?



Not according to EJ number-crunchers



Again I would dispute this. Bears in tank gear do not do much better damage than Prot Warriors, at least mine doesn't. If I'm in a 5 man generally the damage meter looks like this
dps 100
dps 90
dps 80
prot warrior or bear druid 50-60
healer 0-10
Admittedly my Prot Warrior is only 63 so it may change but those numbers also correlate to what I've seen then someone else is tanking with a Prot Warrior for us



OK 6th is awesome, well done, but it's such as odd fight since most people are focussed on cube-clicking rather than dpsing. It's not really representative



As do two large bosses plus the encounters with fear, with undead, with elementals that don't bleed, with stuff that can be interrupted and magical damage. Also compared with paladins Warriors are miles ahead on anything that silences or mana burns

Not only are Warriors the best overall tanks but the situational tanking niches we were promised are all situations where Warriors tank better than one or both of the other two.



It was nothing so planned. I started TBC in a Hunter duo, we couldn't get instances done, I revived my old Druid, tanked to 70, tanked for my guild in Kara, got nerfed, got discouraged and gave up. At that time parity of tanking was not only something we had been promised but had also been implemented in the game



Currently really enjoying my Warrior - what better way to prepare for Conan!

Essentially Paladins need every point of defence and every point of Stamina that Warriors do but also need other stats on their gear for threat and mana. In addition to not instead of

In practice what happens are compromises where Paladins either select or have foisted upon them some non-mitigation stats which push them even further behind Warriors than they started out

Druids also need to spend item budget points on attributes that increase threat which cuts into survivability

Not only that but both Druids and Paladins suffer from their sets being badly designed. The Feral Tier 5 set has 78 Intellect, 41 Spirit which are completely useless to a Druid Main Tank and 170[+4] Strength which is only useful for threat generation something Warriors don't need to worry about when dressing to tank

Except that I'm explaining why druids are good, and you're whining.

You're not interested in discussion. Case closed.

Saw this post a little late.

"Nearly every fight in there" except the ones that require resistance gear (the only kind comes in the form of 67 greens 'of [type] Protection" for druids). No craftables.

And, eh, have you ever fought Gruul? Single boss, no adds. He doesn't count?


I have zero trouble getting groups as a tank. None what-so-ever. I've been asked completely out of the blue if I wanted to come tank--by people I have never met before. Tanks are a rare breed, and are coveted in pretty much whatever form they show up in.


I'm perfectly capable of main-tanking, thank you. The nerf, in retrospect, was not as serious as it was made out to be. Heavy, yes, but we're still around.


It means quite simply that we're better off-tanks. We can generate higher threat than a secondary warrior.


I quite agree--and my total damage reduction is better than our main tank's by ~5%. Physical only, of course.


I swipe-tank heroics. Let's see a warrior do that with Thunderclap.


We do more damage. Test it.


Non-bleedable mobs are a non-issue since they changed Lacerate to give initial damage. The bleed damage is very little threat. It does mean we hold bleedable mobs better, but it really isn't that big a deal.


Both Gruul and Maulgar are pure physical damage fights where druids do better than warriors.

No, things aren't fantastic, and warriors are still king of the hill when it comes to tanking, but they are not the only ones capable of doing the job--most of the time. There are fights where warriors are pretty much required, but a Protection warrior really can't do much else than tank. I'm content to let them, as long as they allow me to tank whenever I'd be a better choice.


Take it back up. I'm doing just fine tanking, especially since 2.1. Threat isn't an issue.

Honestly, a Paladin would blow away Warriors and Bears in terms of threat generation on Undead or Demon targets. But Paladins already generate threat just fine.

It's a matter of what you want and this sentence summarises why I don't want to play my Druid

I'm glad you're having good experiences and I can see that Feral Druids are well worth a raid spot but I'll settle for things being fantastic, being king of the hill and being capable of doing my job all of the time

I probably shouldn't have raked over this old wound, we discussed it before in detail but it's so annoying to see the Lead Designer so woolly on his reasons for a fundamental class balance shift. I'd rather he said "I dunno, seemed like a good idea at the time" than kept trying to push this pure class nonsense

Maybe I'm a bit biased, being in the same guild as Skan, but our Feral tank has tanked 2 hydross adds before, OTs Gruul (taking Hurtful Strikes), he MTs a Kara run weekly and fwiw I just watched him save a wipe by stepping up to MT Voidreaver after the MT went down.

I'd agree that there are encounters where warriors or pallies outshine Druids, and that most boss encounters lend themselves to warrior MTs but I don't think by any means that Feral tanks are non-viable. In fact he's usually the first person I try to get to tank heroics.

Also from my experiences playing my warrior once your gear gets to a certain point your mitigation is so high that you don't generate as much rage from being hit. This causes warriors threat generation to be reduced. I had some issues tanking a regular Arcatraz run because i didn't have enough rage to generate threat. A druid is not limited by this which is one reason they are so great on trash or adds or an OT position.

Sorry if this doesn't make full sense, I'm a bit tired atm, but I refuse to believe that druids are not a viable tank.

Think about it logically - would they be in Serpentshine and Tempest Keep if they hadn't done Gruul?

It's called sarcasm, Tal.



Gruul IS "just one boss and nothing else".

Granted, Druids can't main-tank Hydross. However, with his adds, the best strat is to pick them up and AE them down. There are four, and unless you bring a lot of warriors, one tank will have to wind up with two at some point. Who's best at tanking two targets? Druid. Swipe works wonders, as I'm sure you well know, and you don't need any resistance to tank adds when they die before the 25% mark.

A protection warrior can do it, but it's harder. They have to swap between mobs, which is hard when four of them are piled on top of Hydross, and build approximately equal threat on each. Druids just swipe.



Okay, there are in fact two boss fights where it's just the boss and no adds. Both of them (Gruul and Void Reaver) require significant threat to be generated in the off-tank position without taking much damage, an area in which druids and paladins excel. So even on the one-boss fights, there are some roles that warriors just aren't good for (in particular, off-tank on Gruul is terrible for a prot warrior, because their high avoidance can often result in not getting enough rage to stay in #2).

I should have said, there's no single-boss boss fight that's tanked by a single player, like in Molten Core. Even if it is just one mob, at least one other tank will be required, and that off-tanking role will heavily favour a non-warrior tank. At least one non-warrior tank is highly favourable in every raid encounter in TBC.

The Rage issue is easily alleviated by swapping out defensive pieces for offensive pieces. I usually start with my trinkets, rings, and neck. Increases your threat generation by increasing both damage output and (ironically, for a tank) lowering avoidance

These two views are not compatible to a purist like me

If you can accept that Warriors are generally better can you see why Druids are not viable for people who want to be the best?

The question is not Is there a raid spot for a second rate tank who brings a lot of utility? The question for each of us is Do I personally want to play a second rate tank who brings a lot of utility?