« Random Bytes #6 - “R.I.P., Mr. Gygax” | Home | The Chronicles of Spellborn Beta Video: My Response »
WoW: Tanks Being Left Out in the Cold?
By Cameron Sorden | March 5, 2008
It’s a cold, inhospitable environment up there in Northrend. Existing tanks might not even want to pack their winter gear with all the Death Knights that will be running around after a week or two (at most) once Blizzard’s next big World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, launches. Wolfshead’s recent post on Death Knights in WotLK and the associated comments got me thinking about the current state of the game and the rather depressing shortage of tanks. I don’t know how many times in the last week we’ve been able to set up a whole group for heroic dungeons, but we end up short-handed when none of our tanks are on (and there’s no PUG-tank to be found).
This sad state of affairs isn’t much of a surprise, though, given how useless tanks are in PvP, combined with the recent hyper-focus on PvP gameplay that Blizzard seems to be supporting. All of our Warriors are going Fury, all of our Paladins are going Holy, and our Druids seem to be favoring Resto. I was just talking to a Warrior in my guild last night who was talking about how he really wouldn’t mind going tanking spec if it didn’t gimp him horribly for PvP. Does anyone else see a problem with Blizzard focusing the game so heavily on PvP, while keeping specific class specs for PvE and PvP and sticking a 100g barrier between them (the cost of going back and forth)?
What makes it especially frustrating for tanks, though, is that healing-specced classes and plenty of DPS classes can keep their specs for both raiding and PvP (with the right gear), while all of their tanking abilities do nothing to help their squishy friends. Tack on the fact that grinding in a tank spec is almost as annoying as grinding in a healing spec (although even that got better with the recent addition of spell damage to +healing gear), and suddenly, boom! No tanks to be found.
Anyway, the point of this article isn’t to rant about the lack of tanks (you can just chalk that up to me being bitter). The point is to speculate whether a major class overhaul might be incoming for Warriors and tanks of all classes. With WoW turning into a serious e-sport and Warhammer’s exciting world of PvP-ecstasy launching soon, the tanks of Azeroth won’t be content to just sit on the sidelines and whine about how useless they are.
One of the most interesting things about the planned Death Knight class is the promise that they’ll be able to tank “while wielding a 2-handed weapon.” It seems that Death Knights might be able to both tank and DPS in the same spec, albeit probably with different gear and at varying levels of success depending on how focused they are on DPS versus defense. That’s a pretty nifty promise, and it’s something that should be bothering a lot of Warriors (since when’s the last time you saw a shield pulled out in PvP on a not-Shaman?).
I’m guessing that we’re going to see a mass exodus of existing tanks, and especially Warriors, to the Death Knight class… Unless, of course, Blizzard makes some major changes to the class capabilities of all the tanks. I can’t imagine that Blizzard wants the solely-played tanking class in the game to be the Death Knight, so is it possible that Blizzard has some major changes for the way that tanks influence PvP hidden up their sleeves? Might Warriors be granted options to tank while dual-wielding, have their taunts stun opponents, and be able to shield comrades? Could Paladins and Druids be expecting similar changes for their tanking specs? These classes don’t need to be made into DPS powerhouses (which seems to be Blizzard’s favorite way to handle balance issues)– they just need to be useful. Is that so much to ask?
Of course, the odds are also pretty good that this is just going to be a case of Blizz saying, “Screw you guys. We’re working on Starcraft II. Go play a Death Knight if you don’t like your class.”
Topics: Random |
March 6th, 2008 at 6:35 am
I think that any warrior who has at least heroic-level tanking equipment is able to tank those instances just fine. Blizzard seems to be aware of the problem because they changed Tactical Mastery to increase threat of MS/Bloodthirst. Paladins and Druids are completely screwed, being the hybrid classes. And it makes sense.When they spec into 1 role, they can be on par with the “pure” classes while almost abandoning their other roles. Although it is probably a chore for players, it makes things a lot easier to balance.
No class can perform the same way both in PvP and PvE with just 1 spec. I respecced 6 times a week with my warlock just to be competitive in both. The only exception are paladins, who can heal with the same spec both in arenas and raids, but I’m sure they have some talents that may differentiate them.
March 6th, 2008 at 8:53 am
It’s pretty rough on your healers if an off-spec tanking class is trying to tank a heroic instance or a raid boss, heroic gear or not. But either way, there’s very little incentive to stay in a tank spec right now. If Death Knights can do it all (or at least do more), they’re going to be a lot more attractive than the current tanks.
And of course no class can perform the same with the same spec in PvP and PvE, but DPS classes sure have it a lot easier than tanks do. A PvP specced mage or rogue will still be able to contribute to a raid without a huge loss in DPS or utility, especially if everyone in the raid has decent gear. Holy priests and pallies and resto druids and shamans can switch to a resilience set and heal in the BGs without respeccing. Both of those classic roles transfer between PvE and PvP.
But there’s no room for tanks in the PvP setting, right now (they basically function as big, tough to kill meat shields, but you don’t have to attack them).
March 6th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Sure you can dps with PvP spec in heroics or kara, but if my officers caught you with pvp spec in raid, god save your DKP. Even though the difference doesn’t mean your death, still you aren’t pulling your weight.
Same for arenas, if anyone came and asked me to play a few games with him while being specced completely for PvE, i would tell him to try his luck somewhere else.
When you think about it, tanks always got the short end of the stick in almost every MMORPG that combined PvE and PvP. Unless they actually could switch targets of players which is usually really annoying and Blizzard said that even fear was a mistake because players hate to lose control of their character. The only pvp role in WoW they can fulfill is running flags in WSG where they are actually quite awesome with spell reflect and intervene.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
The problem you run into as a warrior is that unless you are a “tank,” you will not get into many groups. The dps is still gimped even if you are fury specced, or even ms specced; compared to true dps classes. There are the exceptions wher you can off-tank, but without some form of cc, there are other superior dps classes.
So to get geared you really have to put your tanking gear on…spec prot and go.
March 6th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I completely agree, Warriors are hosed. That’s pretty much a given since Druids and Pally’s can almost tank as well as a Prot Warrior.
Especially, when a Hybrid just has to change out gear and they are ready for healing, DPS or Tanking. We have a Druid that tanks most of the trash in Kara, but has a set of DPS gear when he does PVP.
Blizzard isn’t planning to make things right anytime soon, I guarantee that. The only way to fix the issue is to reduce the cost of respecing or eliminate it all together and that won’t be happening. They did fix some issues by Nerfing Druids after a big patch that made them better tanks that Warriors, but that was only a minor fix and it didn’t keep the druids down for long.
I think Blizzard’s solution for warriors is going to be the new Death Knight. A warrior that can tank and DPS. Create a new class,thats their answer.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I got my alt to 70 a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been in LFG for three dungeons in the evenings. Most nights I get a hunter to join then we break group after an hour or so. Last night, in 4 hours, never got a single join in LFG. Blizzard has some issues to fix if they dont want people wandering off to other games.
I’ll agree the PVP focus is turning off PuG tanks. They just dont exist. There just isn’t enough people looking for regular 5 mans.
I’m this close ->| |
March 10th, 2008 at 7:48 am
When the BC came out, a ton of horde rolled blood elf but not a lot of people, nixxed their mains in favor of them. I know a few warriors who have pally alts for fun, and can aoe tank entire instances without cc quite easily. I know a few druid tanks who place top ten on dps every time, and place higher when they swap to kitty form. All of that still doesn’t change the fact that warriors can tank EVERY boss in the game and paladins and druids have a few they can’t tank. It also doesn’t change the mindset in most guilds that a warrior HAS to be the main tank. I don’t see warriors being replaced anytime soon, and I’m sure the death knight will be another niche tanking class that is more situational. I’m sure most people will have a death knight alt, mostly cause it’ll be new, and interesting.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:26 am
[...] the creator. Now that RMT promoter Tobold has returned (kidding), he linked some good blog posts about the upcoming Deathknight class, and what could possibly be done to implement them correctly [...]
March 11th, 2008 at 3:21 am
As far as warriors go, their biggest problem is their insistence on claiming the tank role as their turf, and then whining about paladins and druids tanking. There are other roles, and wielding claims that raids don’t take arms/fury warriors to tell pallies and ferals they have to play holy and resto is hypocritical and goes nowhere.
I can’t speak for paladin tanks on the high end, because I haven’t seen one tank anything beyond H-BM yet, but ferals are at least as good as warriors, with a few pro’s on their side to make up for the lack of fear protection and lack of emergency buttons. Bringing a priest or two usually solves the fear problem. A couple crushing blows doesn’t kill them, they’ve got more health, do more damage, and generate more single-target threat.
A guild that can’t consider other tanking classes is backwards and will stagnate if they can’t adapt. My guild’s raiding party had seven tanks (four bears, three warriors) lined up for the task. Two of the bears, myself and one other, proved to function better than the lead warriors who ran the old kara raids, so they respecced arms and fury, and it’s all bears now. I’ve since passed the torch and gone balance, but guess what replaced me?
As for druids being able to tank, off-spec? I can throw on my tank gear and off-tank kara, or some minor 25-man target, but I don’t think you understand how much that hurts us. We lose ~75 defense, ~17% of our stam, a large chunk of our rage maintenance, our best threat/dps ability, our intercept, 10% of our armor, 15% threat, etc.. What’s left is perhaps the equivalent of a fury-spec tossing on a shield and spamming heroic strike and sunder armor. That just does’t fly.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:22 am
[...] I brought up some similar issues regarding tanks a few weeks ago, and as Zaphid pointed out in the comments, no one can really [...]