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Edited by Nidrorian on 09/06/11 17:43 (BST)
Welcome to the answers thread for our World of Warcraft "Ask the Devs" global Q&A. These answers are in response to the round #9 questions on Tanking, which can be seen here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2151756590
You can check out the Ask the Devs #10 Questions thread here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2151592611 Q: Vengeance is a great tool to help raid tanks hold aggro over DPS, but in 5-man heroics it doesn't stack high enough to keep up with the threat generated by overgeared DPS burst damage. Are there any plans to address this? Are there any plans to help warriors put out more initial threat before Vengeance has been ramped up? – Nikelsndimes (NA), Cémanana (EU-FR), Arthur (TW), Mancake (NA), Migol (NA)
Note: There are fights with tank swaps or incoming adds, or similar mechanics, when threat may matter mid-fight. This is intended – encounter design varies widely. Q: Have you considered normalizing initial Rage for feral druid tanks? For example, when a warrior uses Charge, it generates 15 points of Rage, which lets them use another aggro generating ability quickly, something that Feral druids tend to be a bit short on. Why in Cataclysm was the bear bonus health pool was reduced, as well? Their survivability always depended on the amount of health since they don’t have parry or shield block. Do you have any plans to improve bear tanking in the future? At the moment, it’s considered to be the weakest tank. Have you considered giving druid tanks an additional tool to pull casters at range? It’s the only tank class that doesn’t have a talent or spell to help in those situations. – Pødêrøsø (LA), Вирко (EU-RU), Амелья (EU-RU), Condenacion (EU-ES), Whitewnd (KR)
Q: Do you plan to bring other tanks to the same level as Death Knights who have a lot of advantages over other tanking classes (easier to heal, quite a number of various safe abilities, etc.)? - Меланори (EU-RU)
Q: Compared to DKs, Paladins are weaker when facing mass magic attacks. A Paladin has no choice but to stack stamina in this situation. Is there any change coming to this for Paladins? – 新垣綾瀨 (TW)
Q: Is there any chance that we can see damage reduction numbers being used in the statistic UI, just like shield absorb amount of Discipline priest? – 首領先生 (TW)
Q: Have you ever considered adjusting DPS HP? Seems that while their large pools of health help them on "accidental" situations, a fair portion of the time they can take aggro and tank adds without consequence. – Jainel (LA)
Q: As far as I remember, about five tanks were required in a 25-man group in Burning Crusade. However, the number of tanks in raids has been decreased to one or two since WotLK. I think this is one of the reasons heroic parties suffer from lack of tanks. What if raids have required more tanks? – 명장한니발 (KR)
Q:Are there any plans to update the leg armor in 4.2 now that the plate tanks receive no dodge from agility? Maybe introduce a new leg armor patch that adds str/stamina, or a mastery/stamina? – Dariok (NA), Fredik (EU-ES)
Q: Can you make it so that taunt doesn't miss, just like you did for interrupt abilities? Doesn't feel as though it would be a complete upset to overall balance. – Madmartygan (LA)
Q: Are there any plans to simplify the impossible situation for tanks (8% hit rating, 26 Expertise but all defensive stats at max at the same time) somehow, either through stats on gear or through changes to the game mechanics? Have you considered giving tools to tanks to allow easier capping of hit and expertise to help with threat management? – Sunyara (EU-DE), Gilbey (EU-ES)
Q: At the moment, tanks need to use addons to see threat levels and clearly see which mobs they have aggro with. With all the recent changes and updates being made to the UI, are there any plans to make seeing threat levels and aggro easier and clearer? – Castan (EU-EN)
Q: Protection Paladin is not only the most desired tank because survival abilities for groups and various utilities, but players also generally consider Paladins as an indispensable Class in raids. I know all tanking Classes are being equalized constantly, but survival abilities of Protection Paladins give huge advantages compared to other tanking Classes. Can we expect that other Tanking classes will see more survival abilities for groups in terms of equity? – 디아소르테 (KR)
Protection paladins do bring a lot of utility, but it is quite difficult to make a table comparing a paladin’s Divine Guardian to a Protection warrior’s mobility or a bear druid’s ability to cast Innervate or even Rebirth during lulls in an encounter. They are fundamentally different abilities that have greater or less utility depending on the encounter and your individual raid comp. We don’t want to just hand out a Divine Guardian equivalent to every tank class, just like we don’t think warriors or paladins need the ability to battle rez. It’s a fine line to walk. Homogenization really rankles some players (as it should), but being unable to tank (or heal, or DPS) an encounter because of lack of tools is equally unacceptable to many players. Q: Is there any plan to add a new tank class in the future? I think spell breaker in the Warcraft III is an awesome choice for that! – 聖淇淋 (TW)
Q: What are your intentions with each tank's mastery and mastery in general? – Migol (NA)
Death Knights: We’re pretty happy with how mastery has turned out. It does have the oddity that it scales down in value with your mitigation, but also up in value with your health. But it does indeed scale up pretty smoothly in value, and doesn’t have any unintuitive breakpoints or anything, so we’re happy with it. Druids: We’re pretty happy with how mastery has turned out. It scales well, doesn’t have any unintuitive or unfortunate interactions with other stats, and provides solid performance value. Paladins: Mastery is an attractive stat for paladins, but has some design problems. It scales very well, but due to the nature of our combat tables (and being able to “fill them up”), you can get “block capped,” which is a massive performance benefit. Worse, Protection mastery scales with itself, since there are no diminishing returns on block chance, and the amount of rating you need to block cap goes down as your dodge and parry improve, allowing you to put even more of your stats into dodge or parry. This sort of feedback loop is something we always try to stay away from, so we plan to change this in the future. We tried several alternatives for 4.2, but weren’t happy with the results. Any change which made mastery weaker (such as subjecting block to diminishing returns or changing what it does) would have required mitigation compensation for paladins elsewhere (with all the design risks inherent in making such changes), as well as asking many players to extensively re-gem or re-forge. We’ll ask players to do that when the need is great, but we didn’t think this problem crossed that line. The major risks are that Protection paladins become too powerful or too weak or that gear with mastery will at some point be rejected once characters are over the cap. We don’t think any of those problems will manifest themselves in the 4.2 content. Warriors: Warriors’ mastery is in a similar boat as paladins’, except that it still provides a notable benefit past the cap and scales much slower, making it much more difficult to “block cap.” That delays, but doesn’t remove the problem. Q: Will we see a tanking Legendary sometime soon?: – Pedoso (NA)
Q: Are there any plans to teach players in-game how to tank when they are at an early stage, or at least at some point in the leveling process?: – Romner (EU-EN)
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#1
08/06/2011
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Yay, they're there!
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6 Human Mage
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Edit the title and write 'Answers' mr. Blue! Oh, and thanks for getting the answers over here. :)
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So many great questions unanswered.. and so many with so little research behind them. "Are you going to add any new tanking legs?" "We already have"... NOOOO!
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Edited by Maievs on 08/06/11 18:47 (BST)
Wow. Are people that bloody stupid that this was a highly rated answer? A request to the devs. If there is a question asking about something that already exists, could you possibly not answer it? It's annoying when there are other questions that are skipped because people don't know how to use google or read patch notes. I mean, fair enough on the armour kit front, that's something you'd need to go to the PTR for (unless I've missed something), but something that's been in the game for over half a year? seriously? /prepares to be told that it was an added extra because it was so easy to answer, and so didn't take up another question's space. Q: Is there any plan to add a new tank class in the future? I think spell breaker in the Warcraft III is an awesome choice for that! – 聖淇淋 (TW) Cheeky. I like this guy. |
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Did you really list feral innervate as a feral tank raid utility? Really? Do the devs play the game?
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That felt like it was written by a politician; leaving questions unanswered while at the same time praising his own accomplishments =\
And why weren't the questions that were left unanswered edited out? I would be pretty pissed if my question got picked to be served to the devs, only to have it ignored. |
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Edited by Adre on 08/06/11 20:42 (BST)
Rage is for druids still a problem, it wasn't even answered. It seems like sidestepping all the answers is the common tactic at these Ask the Devs series. What a waste of time.
- Feral innervate gives about 5k mana, listing this as a raid utility shows how much the devs understand their classes. - Druids have real problems with rage, while warrior rage mechanics were buffed in the transition process to cataclysm, druid rage gain mechanics didn't change. - You really think shield tanks and non shield tanks are on the same level? LOL - Mastery is good for all? LOL Nevermind, i'm done with it, i don't want to support a company which is completely disconnected with its customers. Call me when you have real honest answers instead of this !%@!ty politician answers which don't say anyhting. I'm out. Cancelled sub. See: http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/2017/cancel.jpg |
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When talking about different tanking perks, like how a paladin can reduce the damage on 9 or 24 people by 20%, you can't list a 5k mana innervate which the bear have to shapeshift out of bear form to cast. You just can't.
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Apparently blizzard can -.- |
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Edited by Serika on 08/06/11 21:58 (BST)
Eh? This has not the same answers as the one on the us site. Missing the answers about mastery.
Thus the following seems to be missing: Q: What are your intentions with each tank's mastery and mastery in general? – Migol (NA) On which I wanted to add: Druid mastery, it scales well? Really? And it has no unintuitive interactions? With it's 50% chance on crit and thus it's interaction with hit and expertise. Really? |
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How do you think of the ressource requirement for interrupt in PvE encounters?
Tanks already have a lot of things to take care of during an encounter, e.g. positioning the boss, watching out the adds, using abilities to generate as much threat as possible while rolling cooldowns to take as little damage as he can. under this kind of situation, the ressource requirement for interrupt is just not fun. while tanks are using their ressource (rage, runic power, mana) on their threat abilities, they HAVE to hold and reserve them for interrupting the boss' ability every 10 seconds or so. I know there is talent to remove the ressource requirement for interrupt. but imo, those are not fun talents you promise in cata. |
Q: Vengeance is a great tool to help raid tanks hold aggro over DPS, but in 5-man heroics it doesn't stack high enough to keep up with the threat generated by overgeared DPS burst damage. Are there any plans to address this? Are there any plans to help warriors put out more initial threat before Vengeance has been ramped up? – Nikelsndimes (NA), Cémanana (EU-FR), Arthur (TW), Mancake (NA), Migol (NA) that's nice. Now could you answer the question? |
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I'm still laughing at the fact they listed Bear Innervate as a viable utility.
I do agree that they shouldn't just get Divine Guardian because homogenisation is bad, but damn, give them something. |
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Edited by Nibelung on 09/06/11 01:04 (BST)
Personally I don't see all tanks as being equal. My own experience is of pallies being just a wee bit OP, warriors pretty robust and druids a fair way behind. I don't have experience playing a DK but have had the hassle of healing them (they still seem to be the most brittle tanking class).
Of the four classes I reckon its the druid that is most in need of tlc. Personally I'd prefer a druid model that relies on them being the stamina based tank that has the health pool that soaks up the damage that warriors and pallies block. The utility described in the post doesn't really exist as to innervate or battle rez means shifting out of bear form into squishy form. It just isn't really practical when you're getting beat up! Unlike bears, pallies can use all their powers in tank mode. The healing abilites of my paladin have saved a group over and over again. My warrior is jealous! Letting bears use some spells while in bear form might be the way forward - maybe instants like rejuvenate or else allow them to maintain their bear stats for a few seconds after shifting so they could shift, battle rez and shift back without losing their bonus armor and stamina. Druids also need some help with their rage generation and AoE threat. Blitz and Blood & Thunder are great talents - I can charge a group of mobs, stunning 3 targets and getting the rage to get rend up , thunderclap and let off a shockwave. Druids need a similar way of getting a headstart on a fight and of getting aggro on a pack of trash. Even hunter tenacity pets have better AoE - if a hunter's bear can thunderstomp why not let a druid bear do the same. Show bears a little affection and tanks really will be in a fair place. |
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fail answers are fail...>.looks up a decent dps spec
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My tanking partner in raids is a warrior and we are happy with how we perform in relation to each other, i have the oh s**t button (LoH which gets used on others more than me) he has better mobility, i have a 20% raid damage reducer for 6 secs, he has a 20% raid wide health boost that lasts 10 seconds. warriors also have enraged regen, granted its not as powerful as LoH but its still a lifesaver (especially when used with last stand/rallying cry) and on a shorter cd.
Warriors and Paladins seem well balanced, his excellent mobility is just as useful as LoH and removing either from our raids would cause serious problems. We accept that our classes are different and work to what suits the raid best. |
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I cannot for an instant believe that a question from a single region got more votes than the far more common collective questions from across all regions.
Q: Compared to DKs, Paladins are weaker when facing mass magic attacks. A Paladin has no choice but to stack stamina in this situation. Is there any change coming to this for Paladins? – 新垣綾瀨 (TW) Telling me this got more votes than questions which were asked across all regions? |
