Comparison of 2.2 tank damage taken

[wayne62682]

Players seem to either Love or Hate Active Mitigation in WoW. The majority seem to think it's the best thing that has ever happened to tanking whilst others just don't like it. I can see where both sides are coming from, but I personally am very much pro active mitigation. Tanks have such little control over their survivability and their performance just comes down to their gear and not standing in bad. I like to know that I took less damage than scrub tank #4 even though I had worse gear because I'm a better player, just like when you outdps someone in better gear through your skill. Without AM it can sometimes be like playing 51 Ranger in Chocolate, hit 2 buttons and don't stand in bad. Not much challenge if you ask me.

My main issue with it was it just added to the already tons of knowledge a tank needed; besides knowing all the boss abilities, when to move, where adds come from, etc. you also had to know what attack came when so you knew when to pop your mitigation and had to conserve your resource (in my case Rage as I was a Prot Warrior) for those moments. I see the point of it, and after a while it kind of grew on me but it made the pressure of tanking even more than it already is.

[TheRoo]

snip.

Honestly, we all play Rift because it's different from other major MMOs, yet still carries many of the positives from them.

I think the warrior tanking souls are nearly there, a little tuning and we should have 3 very competitive souls that play very differently.
The current specs are locked in place due to the talents that provide % damage reduction, was this intended? To reduce the amount of hybrid specs that would need to be tested? I don't understand why the % damage reduction wasn't just built into the soul contribution.

Then just deal with 5-10% healing, minor phys vrs magic resists, additional healing and health points across the souls. Major ones being at 30 and 61 or something like that, which would allow much more flexibility in soul mixing and matching.

Cause lets face it, Reaver is our best magic resist tank because pacifying strike is too low in the pally tree...... Reaver to me, should be offset with more heals from dots (cause atm they are completely worthless, COMPLETELY) and a higher health pool than the other 3 tanking souls.

Paladin is currently the go to general tank spec, because of the awesome cds and the comfort that all that block on gear is actually being put to decent use. I feel that out of the three souls, this has been shown the most love. The 61 point talent is absolutely garbage, why not make it 5% health and 5% healing or something useful, you can put the 5% life damage buff on the bottom tier instead of the 2-10% builders talent.

Void Knight, oh god, where do I start with thee. Who can't love the damage output? It has a purge, pretty good, the aoe cleanse isn't very useful cause its on a 1 min cd and if you're going to be relied upon for any fight mechanic its pretty worthless- nice aoe purge though. Cleanse is self only, meh. Shields aren't currently worth much and no self healing. Therein lies its issue, the shields need to be buffed to be worthy of use, maybe make the aoe cleanse on a 30 second cd? Remove the aoe purge portion?

Just my two cents.

[Muspel]

My main issue with it was it just added to the already tons of knowledge a tank needed; besides knowing all the boss abilities, when to move, where adds come from, etc. you also had to know what attack came when so you knew when to pop your mitigation and had to conserve your resource (in my case Rage as I was a Prot Warrior) for those moments. I see the point of it, and after a while it kind of grew on me but it made the pressure of tanking even more than it already is.

Tanking is by far one of the easiest jobs in raids. The only place where tanks are under any pressure is in expert dungeons, and that's because they're expected to lead, not because tanking itself is difficult.

[wayne62682]

Honestly, we all play Rift because it's different from other major MMOs, yet still carries many of the positives from them.

(snip)

What I'd honestly like is to force 61 points in each tank tree; give the 61 capstone ability something major that the spec NEEDS to have in order to function correctly. I'd also like to see Pacifying Strike moved higher up or have the mitigation part be made specific to part of Paladin (perhaps as part of the 61 Paladin ability)

Maybe make the Reaver 61 point ability offer something similar to Pacifying Strike as we now have, such as making Flesh Rot apply a debuff that reduces damage (basically the old Pacifying Strike, the idea being you get Plague Bringer to apply it to multiple targets so it's OK to stay as a debuff instead of a buff)

In short I think we need to have builds similar to how the Cleric/Rogue function in the sense that tanking builds have 61 points in a tanking soul, but Warriors get multiple choices for specific situations (e.g. high magic damage, high physical damage, general purpose/DPS) while Cleric and Rogues should have to have a jack of all trades build that's good but not great at everything and have the loss of choice made up for in special ablities (mobility/cooldowns for Rogue, Self/party healing for Cleric)

[Lewin]

Honestly, we all play Rift because it's different from other major MMOs, yet still carries many of the positives from them.

I think the warrior tanking souls are nearly there, a little tuning and we should have 3 very competitive souls that play very differently.
The current specs are locked in place due to the talents that provide % damage reduction, was this intended? To reduce the amount of hybrid specs that would need to be tested? I don't understand why the % damage reduction wasn't just built into the soul contribution.

Then just deal with 5-10% healing, minor phys vrs magic resists, additional healing and health points across the souls. Major ones being at 30 and 61 or something like that, which would allow much more flexibility in soul mixing and matching.

Cause lets face it, Reaver is our best magic resist tank because pacifying strike is too low in the pally tree...... Reaver to me, should be offset with more heals from dots (cause atm they are completely worthless, COMPLETELY) and a higher health pool than the other 3 tanking souls.

Paladin is currently the go to general tank spec, because of the awesome cds and the comfort that all that block on gear is actually being put to decent use. I feel that out of the three souls, this has been shown the most love. The 61 point talent is absolutely garbage, why not make it 5% health and 5% healing or something useful, you can put the 5% life damage buff on the bottom tier instead of the 2-10% builders talent.

Void Knight, oh god, where do I start with thee. Who can't love the damage output? It has a purge, pretty good, the aoe cleanse isn't very useful cause its on a 1 min cd and if you're going to be relied upon for any fight mechanic its pretty worthless- nice aoe purge though. Cleanse is self only, meh. Shields aren't currently worth much and no self healing. Therein lies its issue, the shields need to be buffed to be worthy of use, maybe make the aoe cleanse on a 30 second cd? Remove the aoe purge portion?

Just my two cents.

I use the ae cleanse/purge as a purge far more often then as a cleanse, a shorter CD on it would definitely be appreciated, but don't screw around with its functionality.

[TheRoo]

What I'd honestly like is to force 61 points in each tank tree; give the 61 capstone ability something major that the spec NEEDS to have in order to function correctly. I'd also like to see Pacifying Strike moved higher up or have the mitigation part be made specific to part of Paladin (perhaps as part of the 61 Paladin ability)

Maybe make the Reaver 61 point ability offer something similar to Pacifying Strike as we now have, such as making Flesh Rot apply a debuff that reduces damage (basically the old Pacifying Strike, the idea being you get Plague Bringer to apply it to multiple targets so it's OK to stay as a debuff instead of a buff)

In short I think we need to have builds similar to how the Cleric/Rogue function in the sense that tanking builds have 61 points in a tanking soul, but Warriors get multiple choices for specific situations (e.g. high magic damage, high physical damage, general purpose/DPS) while Cleric and Rogues should have to have a jack of all trades build that's good but not great at everything and have the loss of choice made up for in special ablities (mobility/cooldowns for Rogue, Self/party healing for Cleric)

That's exactly what wow did.....

Next step, everyone is putting the same points in souls, why do we even have talent trees?

I know, lets make them all the same!

The idea is having the souls even keel on performance without "forcing" people to max out tiers to be competitve. If Blizzard hadn't completely removed all soul or talent identity, I may not have been so eager to jump ship when Rift was released. I think the whole concept of the soul tree is one of Rift's most attractive features, there is no need to add such restraints to the trees.

[wayne62682]

But at the same time, many combinations just don't work or aren't competitive; what's the point of having such combinations if everyone defaults to several tried and mathematically proven souls? WoW eventually merged talent trees because they realized that everyone took specific points because they were no-brainer choices or mathematically superior. In fact I recall when Rift launched one of the issues with the soul trees was that it was easy to screw yourself by taking souls that didn't work together.

I would rather not have choice than have the illusion of choice wherein you have several builds that work, and many more that shouldn't even exist since there's no reason to use them outside of as a way to know who new players are by their strange or unworkable soul choices.

[TheRoo]

But at the same time, many combinations just don't work or aren't competitive; what's the point of having such combinations if everyone defaults to several tried and mathematically proven souls? WoW eventually merged talent trees because they realized that everyone took specific points because they were no-brainer choices or mathematically superior. In fact I recall when Rift launched one of the issues with the soul trees was that it was easy to screw yourself by taking souls that didn't work together.

I would rather not have choice than have the illusion of choice wherein you have several builds that work, and many more that shouldn't even exist since there's no reason to use them outside of as a way to know who new players are by their strange or unworkable soul choices.

All builds with the points spent in the appropriate trees would work if the damage reduction coefficients were built into the passive soul bonuses. Then its just a matter of play style / utility that you bring.

[dpser]

There are countless threads on this forum that the devs should probably ignore. This, however, is one they should read thoroughly. Great stuff here.

[Muspel]

All builds with the points spent in the appropriate trees would work if the damage reduction coefficients were built into the passive soul bonuses. Then its just a matter of play style / utility that you bring.

The problem with that is that if your survivability is all passive, then your rotation ceases to matter. This goes back to the whole "good play should be rewarded" argument, because while managing defensive cooldowns takes skill, that's still less than a dozen keypresses over an entire encounter. There needs to be a more immediate and direct result of doing the right thing, just like what healers, DPS, and support have.

[Perros_The_Second]

sure lets make every tank build in the game exactly the same. We can just have 1 option in the trees which you can select 61 times. The base abilities will also be exactly the same. All three warrior tanking tree, justicar, and RS will be exactly the same. I mean god forbid we actually have some variety and differences between builds and souls...

Where did I say that? Comparable cooldowns doesn't mean they should have the same cooldowns. But we can't balance cooldowns with mitigation and all tanks need end up at similar numbers for effective health, damage reduction, avoidance and the amount of damage that can be removed using cooldowns.

I believe that 3 of the 5 tank souls are well positioned and have a purpose besides their main role, 2 are not. Of the Warrior tanks VK is in the best state.

Voidknight shields are actually useful now that they have some scaling, the only problem is that VK is at the moment pushed into the corner of being the Warrior "dps": tank and shields reduce dps and aggro and negate this purpose. VKs need a very slight EHP buff, a reduction in damage (already happening because procs are fixed), and some aggro component on shields in my opinion. Being able to throw a 5k self shield at the right moment on short cooldown is nice utility in addition to the other utility VKs get.

Reaver should really be the dps tank. It needs a big boost in single target and a boost in AE (burst) dps, it needs some extra aggro on dot application to allow applying dots early without the risk of loosing aggro. Reaver should be the Warrior dps tank because there needs to be a purpose for all the dps abilities it has. Going 61 points in Reaver should be viable without a huge loss in mitigation. 51-58 point Reaver hybrids are good only because of their extra DR from Paladin. If Reaver should ever loose this DR, it would be dead.

Paladin is in the worst state at the moment, in my opinion. It has been improved from the abysmal state during most of Rift 1.x but it is still lagging behind in mitigation, in utility, and smoothness. It takes comparable damage to VK but lacks the 10% heal buff. Most group utility abiltiies (healing) is of very little use. Its one saving grace is its enormous AE rescue but this one cooldown is not enough for a role to be viable. Energy starvation is still an issue. My request would be +10% incoming healing, +5% health, a battle rez, and a block proc'ed energy recovery ability. Paladin should be the tank soul Warriors choose specifically for boss fights (not Reaver)

[TheGrinnz]

Tanking is by far one of the easiest jobs in raids. The only place where tanks are under any pressure is in expert dungeons, and that's because they're expected to lead, not because tanking itself is difficult.

While true, I wouldn't say "by far". Any screw-up by the tank leads to a raid wipe in almost every raid boss (same with healers unless you are overhealing), in contrast screwups by the DPS generally only leads to themselves dying unless they are covering critical utility, or it's Sicaron

[TheRoo]

The problem with that is that if your survivability is all passive, then your rotation ceases to matter. This goes back to the whole "good play should be rewarded" argument, because while managing defensive cooldowns takes skill, that's still less than a dozen keypresses over an entire encounter. There needs to be a more immediate and direct result of doing the right thing, just like what healers, DPS, and support have.

Rotation should always matter, for threat - minor group/self enhancements. I'm not saying you put 76 points in tank trees you can walk into an instance and just stand there to be healed and win. I'm just saying the "core" effectiveness of the different tanks should be built in from the ground up.
Thats why we went with the armor/health/resist built in synergies right? So we didn't just pick those out of the tree? Now we're building specs around the %damage reductions only, I don't see how we're ahead now.
Tanks primarily should bring threat management, utility, defensive cd management and then a very small defensive bonus from rotation management.
If defensive bonus comes heavily from rotation, take a look back at rogue tanking 1.1. It becomes less fun.

[TheRoo]

I believe that 3 of the 5 tank souls are well positioned and have a purpose besides their main role, 2 are not. Of the Warrior tanks VK is in the best state.

I believe that you hit the nail on the head with some of your post. VK definately brings the most versatility and utility out of the warrior tanking specs. Although, I don't think Paladin is as bad as you have made it out to be, the short effective cds that are at your disposal, make Paladin a highly effective tanking spec.
I will agree that the rotation blows, the healing is awful and the energy starvation is the pits;
but that being said, I would actually say that Reaver is int he worst state. As you mentioned if it was not for the position of pacifying strike, it would be a useless tanking soul. That's pretty much the cold hard truth here, I mean hell, when Raptors is going on about VK and not ranting about spamming blood fever, you know something is wrong.
The aoe threat from dots lack serverely with snap aggro and the spec is completely reliant on getting a solid cyclone strike in to snap aoe threat and allow your dots to get some ticks in.
It desperately calls for a +healing (either incoming or self generated from dots) or + health. Plus some sort of group utility gimic, like some sort of debuff for the dots..... Like +crit/armor reduction or something.

[kenji1134]

Since we're discussing tanks in general, I wanna throw something else into the equation...
Warriors are just lacking in tools for dealing with multiple mobs at range. This is most prevalent in experts, where people all but start crying at the sight of a warrior tank.

VK has summons, but some mobs are immune to it, and unless you are being beat on by a lot of mobs, you cant rely on getting your free Void Summon refresh.
Paladin has Light's Decree, which hits really hard, generate a lot of hate... and is useable once every 12 seconds. Not often enough to deal with adds coming in at erratic intervals left and right.
Reaver, with the 20m range spreading dots, modified by endurance, sounds like it'd be the best at wrangling adds... Sadly the dots are completely backloaded, meaning it will have next to no effect if a dps decides to unload on an add, or aoe, or it goes after a healer.

Mitigation aside, we need some help with aggro. We dont have cleric's 30m range unlimited targets hate threat. We dont have rogue's ability to port to an add and instantly and automatically start pulsing "significant" aoe hate. We are kinda, unprepared for adds, unless its just one.

So, couple things. We need better aoe aggro tools, and especially ranged aggro tools.

Make Light's Decree a 5s CD with half its current damage. So Paladin comes with 2 Significant Threat aoes, one being ranged.
Make all Reaver dots' hate be 50% frontloaded. You fire the dot, it generates 50% of its hate upon landing, and the other 50% over 16 seconds. If possible, code it so that refreshing the dot before it falls off does not proc the 50% frontloaded hate generation.
And please, please, reconsider all of the "X abilities modified by Endurance" talents. Just make all of them do the exact same thing.
All tank attacks generate additional hate modified by endurance. No waiting for pacts and trying to work in an extra pact generator when you're already at 10. No more hoping for a block to get some quick threat. No more spamming Blood Fever because, in theory, it should generate more hate than Pacifying Strike...
You're a tank. As you get more gear, you get more health, and generate more aggro. Period.